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1 






A GEOGRAPHICAL READER 


OR 


PEN-PICTURES IN GEOGRAPHY. 


COMPILED AND ARRANGED 



WILLIAM W. RUPERT, C.E, 

V\ 

Superintendent of Schools. Pottstown, Pa. • r 



LEACH, SHEWELL, AND SANBORN. 

BOSTON. NEW YORK. CHICAGO. 



Copyright, 1894, 

By leach, SHEWELL, AND SANBORN. 


Nortoooti 59 rf 03 ; 

J. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith. 
Boston, Mass., U.S.A. 


PREFACE. 


This work has been compiled for the purpose of sup¬ 
plementing the ordinary text-book on geography. 

The author believes that much less time should be 
given to memorizing unimportant details, and that the 
time thus saved should be devoted to the reading of 
numerous, attractive, and instructive selections, bearing 
upon the subject, from our best magazines and books of 
travel. 

To take one illustration : suppose the members of the 
class in geography have read what their text-book has to 
say about Russia. Let them now turn to their geograph¬ 
ical reader, and with their text-book open at the map of 
Russia, let them read what such men as Kennan, Curtis, 
and others have to say about this country. As the pupils 
read, they follow the plucky travellers, on the map and in 
imagination, through the cities, up and down the rivers, 
and across the mountains, in which they are now deeply 
interested. Here the traveller stops and talks with them 
about the climate and the productions ; there he dwells 

iii 




IV 


PREFACE. 


upon peculiar manners, customs, and dress ; while through 
it all runs a thread of personal adventure that keeps inter¬ 
est at white heat. 

This reading should furnish the basis for much oral and 
written reproduction ; thus fixing the geographical facts, 
and enlarging the pupil’s command of good English. 

Pupils taught in this manner will not only acquire much 
more knowledge of geography than those who merely 
study the text-book, but, what is of infinitely more im¬ 
portance, they will form correct habits of study and will 
acquire a taste for good wholesome literature. 

In this Reader we have been able to give only a few 
“ sample dishes ” from the various authors quoted ; but 
we hope that these may so sharpen the appetite that 
neither teacher nor pupils will rest satisfied until they 
have “ eaten to the full ” at the original sources of 
supply. 

It only remains to thank the authors and publishing 
houses that have so generously and courteously granted 
permission to use the matter which we have selected. 

W. W. R. 


PoTTSTOWN, Pa., October, 1894. 


CONTENTS 


PART 1. 

THE WESTERN CONTINENT 

NORTH AMERICA. 

1. America. 

2. Surprising Distances in the United States . 

3. Chattanooga and Birmingham .... 

4. Some Facts about Florida . 

5. Orange Culture in Florida ..... 

6. A City of Sea-shells • . 

7. How Large is “ the West ” ? 

8. Around Lake Superior ..... 

9. Chicago ........ 

10. Minneapolis and her Flour-mills .... 

11. Some Facts about Iowa ..... 

12. The Signal Station on Pike’s Peak 

13. Great Salt Lake. 

14. California versus Oregon ..... 

15. The Opening of Oklahoma ..... 

16. Denver . . ' . 

17. Cowboy Life . .. 


PAGE 

3 

4 

9 

13 

20 

22 

26 

29 

36 

39 

45 

52 

54 

56 

59 

70 

73 


V 











CONTENTS. 


vi 


18. 

Mountain-climbing . . . 0 . 



PAGE 

. 76 

19. 

Seattle ...... 



. 79 

20. 

The Sleeping-bag ..... 



. 82 

21. 

Invalids’ Ideas of Climate .... 



. 84 

22. 

Discovery of Gold in California . 



. 87 

23 - 

Leadville ....... 



. 90 

24. 

Furs of the Great Fur Land 



• 93 

25. 

Dogs of Hudson’s Bay Territory 



. 96 

26. 

Arctic Cold ...... 



100 

27. 

The Garden of the World .... 



. 104 

28. 

The National Vehicle of Cuba 



. 108 

29. 

The American Railroad System in Mexico . 



. 111 

30- 

A Day's Journey from Vera Cruz to the City of Mexico 

. 115 

31- 

The Ascent of Popocatepetl 



. 121 

32- 

A Coffee Plantation in Guatemala 



. 128 

33 - 

Guatemala City ...... 



• 131 

34. 

The Panama Railroad and the Canal . 



• 133 


SOUTH AMERICA. 


1. Climate of Brazil . . . . . . . -139 

2. The Bay of Rio cle Janeiro ....... 141 

3. Gathering Rubber in Brazil.142 

4. Social Life at Rio.146 

5. American Farmers on the Amazons . . . . *149 

6. A Tropical Forest.1^7 

7. Abolition of Slavery in Brazil.160 

8. An Extraordinary Republic . . . . . .163 

9. Sipping Mate . . . . . . . . .170 

10. In and about Quito . . . . . . . .171 


II. Glimpses of Lima and the Peruvians 















CONTENTS. 


vii 

PAGE 

12. Valparaiso.185 

13. Overland Routes from Chili to the Argentine Republic . 188 

14. Patagonian Indians.192 

PART II. 

THE EASTERN CONTINENT 

EUROPE. 

1. Education in Russia ........ 199 

2. Passports and the Russian Custom Houses .... 202 

3. Nihilism .......... 208 

4. Nizhni Novgorod ........ 212 

5. Scotia’s Fair Capital ........ 215 

6. Holland.218 

7. Skating in Holland.222 

8. Dutch Character.224 

9. Portsmouth ......... 226 

10. Gibraltar .......... 231 

11. Marble-mining in Carrara ....... 239 

12. Pride and Poverty in Spain . ...... 245 

13. Christopher Columbus.250 

14. Palos and Columbus ........ 253 

15. Characteristics of the Turks ...... 255 

16. The City of the Sultan.260 

ASIA. 

1. Siberia’s Enormous Territory.267 

2. A Wood-cutter in the Forests of Siberia .... 269 

3. Exchanging Calls in Teheran ...... 273 

4. Domestic Customs in Teheran.277 

5. An Illustration ......... 280 

















Vlll 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

6. Some Facts about China and the Chinese .... 282 

7. The Japanese ......... 290 

8. Korea and its Inhabitants ....... 294 

9. First View of the Himalayas ...... 297 

10. India under the Queen ....... 298 

11. Some Social Features of Hindoo Life . . . . . 307 

12. Hindoo Worship ........ 311 

13. Benares . . . . . , . . . *315 

14. Bombay . . . . . . , . . *317 


AFRICA. 


I. 

Suez Canal ...... 




• 323 

2. 

Cairo and the Khedive 




• 325 

3 - 

The Pyramids ..... 




• 335 

4 * 

Tangiers ...... 




• 338 

5 - 

Character of the Moors 




• 340 

6 . 

Footpaths in Africa .... 




• 341 

7 - 

Malarial Fever in Africa 




• 343 

8 . 

The People of Central Africa 




• -345 


AUSTRALIA. 





I . 

Melbourne ...... 




• 351 

2. 

Sheep-runs in Australia 



0 

• 355 

3 - 

Queensland and the Aborigines . 

. 

. 


• 358 


Pronouncing Vocabulary 


• 365 




















ILLUSTRATIONS. 




PAGE 


1. Samuel F. Smith. Facing 

2. PiLLSBURY A MiLL. Facing 

By permission of “ The Northwestern Miller.” 

3. Falls of St. Anthony — from East Side . 


By permission of “ The Northwestern Miller.” 

4. ^Pike's Peak in the Distance . . . Facing 

5. -^^Salt Lake City from Eagle Gate . . Facing 

6. ^Great Salt Lake— Lake Park Bathing Resort, Facing 

7. *A Cowboy. Facing 

8. *Roring and Throwing a Steer . . . Facing 

9. ^Cowboys at Breakfast. Facing 

10. Dogs of Hudson’s Bay. 


From Robinson’s “ Great Fur Land.” By permission of G. P. 
Putnam’s Sons. 


3 

40 

41 

52 

54 

56 

73 

74 

75 
97 


II. The Night Camp.103 

From Robinson’s “ Great Fur Land.” By permission of G. P. 

Putnam’s Sons. 

* By permission of Rev. J. N. Hallock, Editor of “ Christian at Work.” 


IX 



X 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 


PAGE 


12. ^Popocatepetl . 

Facing 

121 

13. ^Coffee Culture .... 

Facing 

128 

14. *Bay of Rio de Janeiro . 

Facing 

141 

15. *A Peruvian Belle .... 

. 

181 

16. *A Lima Lady in her Manta . 

. 

183 

17. ^Windmill in Holland 

Facing 

218 

18. Scene in Holland .... 


219 

From De Amicis’ “ Holland and its People.” 1 
G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 

ly permission of 


19. Windmills . 

. 

221 

From De Amicis’ “ Holland and its People.” 1 
G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 

dy permission of 


20 . -^GiBR ALTAR . 

Facing 

231 

21. *A Roadway, Gibraltar . 

Facing 

232 

22. ^Turkish Family .... 

Facing 

00 

LTl 

et 

23. '^Persian Woman .... 

Facing 

277 

24. ^Chinese Family at a Meal . 

Facing 

289 

25. ^Yokohama. 

Facing 

292 

26. *TiiE Annual Overflow of the Nile 

Faci)ig 

335 

27. ^Pyramids of Egypt .... 

Facing 

337 

28. ^Transporting Ivory 

Facing 

348 


* By permission of Rev. J. N. Hallock, Editor of “ Christian at Work.” 


Part I. 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


NORTH AMERICA. 



7 




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SAMUEL F. SMITH, author of “America.” 


And there’s a nice youngster of excellent pith,— 

Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith ; 

But he shouted a song for the brave and the free,— 

Just read on his medal, “ My country, of thee ! ” 

Holmes’ “The Boys.” 




AMERICA. 


My country, 'tis of thee, 
Sweet land of liberty, 

Of thee I sing; 

Land where my fathers died. 
Land of the pilgrim’s pride. 
From every mountain-side 
Let freedom ring. 


My native country thee — 
Land of the noble, free — 
Thy name I love; 

I love thy rocks and rills. 

Thy woods and templed hills ; 
My heart with rapture thrills 
Like that above. 


Let music swell the breeze. 

And ring from all the trees 
Sweet freedom’s song: 

Let mortal tongues awake ; 

Let all that breathe partake; 

Let rocks their silence break, — 
The sound prolong. 


3 


4 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


Our fathers’ God, to Thee, 

Author of liberty. 

To Thee we sing; 

Long may our land be bright 
With freedom’s holy light; 

Protect us by Thy might. 

Great God, our King. 

Samuel F. Smith. 


SURPRISING DISTANCES IN THE UNITED 
STATES.i 

“How far is it to Chicago.?” Our young English 
friend made the inquiry when that city was suggested as 
convenient headquarters while he might be running up 
and down on a tour of observation. When the answer 
was given, “Something over a thousand miles,” he was 
amazed; for he was fresh from England, whose longest 
meridian diameter is only three hundred and sixty-five 
statute miles from Berwick to St. Alban’s Head, and 
whose narrowest measure is sixty-two, from the head of 
the Solway to Wandsbeck, on the German Ocean. 

Perhaps it is expecting too much that one should know 
tolerably the travelled lengths and breadths in his own 
United States; and, indeed, it would be expecting a great 
deal. Yet, if one has completed a course of common- 
school or higher study, and can give a fair analysis of any 
one of Dickens’s novels, or outline the status of the unfin¬ 
ished stories in the magazines, or give the prices on stocks, 

1 The United States of Yesterday and To-morrow. By William Bar- 
rows, D.D. Roberts Brothers, Boston, 1888. 


DISTANCES IN THE UNITED STATES. 


5 


or at the best hotels in Europe, one has a right to expect 
that he can locate leading cities in the Union within a 
thousand miles of their true position. 

When I once spoke to an intelligent friend of having 
been recently in Omaha, he inquired with all the simplic¬ 
ity of one of Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad, “ Well, did 
you see the Mormons ? ” He was surprised that I had not 
“run out” to Salt Lake City “just back of Omaha,” to 
interview those peculiar saints. My answer surprised him 
more, — that having seen that whole conglomerate when 
they constituted Nauvoo, this side the Mississippi, I did 
not care to go a thousand miles out of my way to visit Salt 
Lake City. “ A thousand miles ! Why, I thought it was 
just back of Omaha!” His question was as if some one 
had proposed some morning, in Boston, to run down to 
Fort Sumter and see the ruins, or to run up from Lon¬ 
don to Stockholm, or down to Rome, in a cheap and 
temporary curiosity; for the distances in these cases are 
the same. 

Parties start from Bangor, overland, for San Francisco, 
and the most of them are surprised to learn that when at 
St. Louis they will be only about one-third of their jour¬ 
ney. Yet then they have travelled as far as from Wash¬ 
ington to Tehuantepec, air-line, or from London, by water, 
to St. Petersburg. The completed trip is half a thousand 
more miles than from London to Monrovia, Africa. Such 
parties may well be grateful that they were not called to 
the excursion in old immigrant times. 

The trip to Oregon in those days is suggestive of dis¬ 
tances and discomforts, too, — from the seaboard to St. 
Louis (about fifteen hundred miles), and thence, with the 
comforts of a Missouri steamer, four hundred and fifty 


4 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


Our fathers’ God, to Thee, 

Author of liberty. 

To Thee we sing; 

Long may our land be bright 
With freedom’s holy light; 

Protect us by Thy might. 

Great God, our King. 

Samuel F. Smith. 


SURPRISING DISTANCES IN THE UNITED 
STATES.! 

“How far is it to Chicago.?” Our young English 
friend made the inquiry when that city was suggested as 
convenient headquarters while he might be running up 
and down on a tour of observation. When the answer 
was given, “ Something over a thousand miles,” he was 
amazed; for he was fresh from P 2 ngland, whose longest 
meridian diameter is only three hundred and sixty-five 
statute miles from Berwick to St. Alban’s Head, and 
whose narrowest measure is sixty-two, from the head of 
the Solway to Wandsbeck, on the German Ocean. 

Perhaps it is expecting too much that one should know 
tolerably the travelled lengths and breadths in his own 
United States ; and, indeed, it would be expecting a great 
deal. Yet, if one has completed a course of common- 
school or higher study, and can give a fair analysis of any 
one of Dickens’s novels, or outline the status of the unfin¬ 
ished stories in the magazines, or give the prices on stocks, 

1 The United States of Yesterday and To-morrow. By William Bar- 
rows, D.D. Roberts Brothers, Boston, 1888. 


I DISTANCES IN THE UNITED STATES. 5 

, or at the best hotels in Europe, one has a right to expect 
’ that he can locate leading cities in the Union within a 
thousand miles of their true position. 

I When I once spoke to an intelligent friend of having 
been recently in Omaha, he inquired with all the simplic¬ 
ity of one of Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad, “Well, did 
,, you see the Mormons ? ” He was surprised that I had not 
1 “run out” to Salt Lake City “just back of Omaha,” to 
I interview those peculiar saints. My answer surprised him 
' more, — that having seen that whole conglomerate when 
they constituted Nauvoo, this side the Mississippi, I did 
; not care to go a thousand miles out of my way to visit Salt 
I Lake City. “ A thousand miles ! Why, I thought it was 
j just back of Omaha!” His question was as if some one 
had proposed some morning, in Boston, to run down to 
Fort Sumter and see the ruins, or to run up from Lon¬ 
don to Stockholm, or down to Rome, in a cheap and 
temporary curiosity; for the distances in these cases are 
the same. 

Parties start from Bangor, overland, for San Francisco, 
and the most of them are surprised to learn that when at 
St. Louis they will be only about one-third of their jour¬ 
ney. Yet then they have travelled as far as from Wash¬ 
ington to Tehuantepec, air-line, or from London, by water, 
to St. Petersburg. The completed trip is half a thousand 
more miles than from London to Monrovia, Africa. Such 
parties may well be grateful that they were not called to 
the excursion in old immigrant times. 

The trip to Oregon in those days is suggestive of dis¬ 
tances and discomforts, too, — from the seaboard to St. 
Louis (about fifteen hundred miles), and thence, with the 
comforts of a Missouri steamer, four hundred and fifty 



8 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT, 


in the saddle for the cowboys were a slight matter : “Four 
hundred miles ” ; “ Six hundred and more ” ; “ From Beck’s 
rancho on the Pecos, about six hundred”; “Well, Fort 
Ringgold way, on the Rio Grande, nigh on to nine hun¬ 
dred.” Amazed at these replies, I said, “ Why, how far do 
you drive cattle here.?” “Stranger, that herd this way 
yonder has come a right smart thousand. Six months on 
the trail, and the Redskins touched them at a levy a head 
for crossing the Indian Territory.” 

From those more southern and southwestern grazing- 
grounds the ranch-men started their herds for the North 
on the tender grass of January, and kept pace with the 
travelling spring, and so came upon the cattle-trains at 
Salina in early summer. But now, with the locomotive at 
San Antonio, Santa P'e,Tucson,and Fort Yuma, the steers 
are ticketed through, and find a much easier and speedier 
way to the slaughter. So soon following in the trail of 
buffalo and antelope have come compass and chain and 
warrantee deeds, and farms and city plots : acres of prairie 
dogs have been ploughed in for so much wheat to the 
acre; and planted groves break the monotonous and tree¬ 
less expanse, and throw grateful shade over frolicking 
children, and anvils so musical of thrift, and over family 
altars so prophetic and insuring of “whatsoever things 
are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever 
things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever 
things are lovely, and whatsoever things are of good 
report.” 

Our railroad from Chicago to San Francisco is about 
twenty-three hundred and fifty miles, and the daily trains 
starting from each terminus with full coaches indicate that 
the road is an American necessity. The distance traversed 


CHATTANOOGA AND BIRMINGHAM. 


9 


by it will be better understood by a European and by those 
Americans who travel mainly in foreign lands, and so the 
United States will be more intelligently measured, if we 
take this road to Europe for a measuring illustration. 
Suppose, therefore, that we place the Chicago terminus 
on London as a turn-table, and sweep the road round, as 
the hand on the dial of a clock, and thus see where the 
San Francisco terminus would rest. For convenience, an 
air-line is assumed between its two real termini and between 
the illustrating ones that are about to be named. Giving 
it a northerly direction from London, its San Francisco 
terminus will rest in the extreme north of Iceland. Mov¬ 
ing off to the right, it will extend almost to the head of 
the Gulf of Bothnia, and just reach St. Petersburg, open¬ 
ing communication between those two grand capitals in 
air-line, as the crow flies. One-third of the Black Sea will 
be shadowed by the moving index, which, passing on, cuts 
its circle midway through the deserts of Barca and Sahara 
and enters the Atlantic among the Canary Islands. 
Hence, in its home curve, taking in the Azores and two- 
thirds of the Atlantic between London and Newfoundland, 
it will close its circle in Northern Iceland. 


CHATTANOOGA AND BIRMINGHAM.^ 

Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Birmingham, Alabama, 
are marvels, each in its own way. Chattanooga may be 
described, not inaptly, as lying at the foot of Missionary 
Ridge and Lookout Mountain, though when the battles 

1 The Old South and the New. By Hon. William D. Kelley. G. P. 
Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1888. 


lO 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


were fought which made the names of these mountains 
famous, the smoky little village on the Cumberland River 
was, at its nearest to either of them, more than a mile 
away. It is a growing place, and grows because its people 
are all busy. It is, at least in one respect, cosmopolitan. 
We were told that its adult population is about equally 
divided between ex-soldiers of the Confederate and of the 
Union army, and that recruits from either, or masters of 
industry who have never meddled with arms or politics, 
are alike welcome to a share in its fortunes. 

For so young a city its industries are widely diversified. 
Of course those connected with ore beds, coal mines, and 
furnaces predominate, but it has others. Its lumber trade, 
especially in white woods, is claimed to be second only to 
that of Chicago. It has a tannery, too, which is said to 
be the largest in the world, and, without having seen all 
its rivals, I am prepared, from its dimensions, to believe 
that it is the largest. The labor it employs is colored, 
and it was in connection with the homes of these laborers 
that my attention was first drawn to the striking contrast 
between the neat, commodious, and well-painted homes of 
the negro laborers engaged in mining, smelting, and me¬ 
chanical pursuits, and the cabins in which the poor white 
growers of cotton live now, as they did before the war. 

With a party of friends, in a special car on the belt 
road, which encircles the city, we visited foundries for 
miscellaneous wares and cast-iron pipe works, and passed 
several furnaces. We examined the rolling mill which 
was constructed by the government during the war for the 
re-rolling of old rails, and after the war was greatly en¬ 
larged and improved by private owners, among whom are 
Messrs. Cooper and Hewitt of New York, and which is now 


CHATTANOOGA AND BIRMINGHAM. II 

being fitted with all the appointments necessary for the 
production of Bessemer steel and its conversion into rails. 

But the establishment which interested me as much as 
any in Chattanooga was a Bessemer steel nail works, of 
which Mr. James Duncan, formerly of the Cambria Works, 
of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, is superintendent, and, I 
think, proprietor. The establishment is not remarkable 
for its extent, but is very remarkable for the compactness 
of its arrangements and the perfection of the nails it 
produces. The labor is colored, though the fact that an 
applicant for employment is white is not an impediment 
to his engagement if he be a skilful nailmaker. When 
the nail mill is in operation, the bodies of many of the 
negro workmen, who are youths, or very young men, 
sway to its music, and at times the whole gang breaks 
out in a negro melody or chorus. 

Here I found unexpected evidence of the industry and 
mechanical skill of these colored boys, in attestation of 
which I purchased from one of them a steel paper-cutter, 
made from a railway spike with such imperfect tools as he 
had himself constructed. The maker disliked to part with 
this evidence of his skill because it had not received the 
finishing touches, and the blade was less smooth and 
polished than he had intended to make it. I also secured 
a lady’s button-hook, made from a spike with the same 
artless tools by the same lad. Mr. Duncan assured us that 
for the privilege of testing their skill, and improving it, 
some of the boys would devote more than half of the hour 
allowed for dinner to this work, and that the only limita¬ 
tion upon the number of articles they might produce was 
that they should work at them during dinner-time only, 
and should report the fact whenever they required another 


2 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


spike. The establishment of an industrial art school in the 
midst of a population like these Chattanooga nailmakers 
would soon produce gratifying evidence of the adaptation 
of negro labor to mechanical pursuits requiring a high 
degree of skill. Chattanooga, in addition to its productive 
industries, is also a large distributer of groceries and dry 
goods, and evidently has a commercial future. 

Birmingham lacks the advantages Chattanooga derives 
from its situation on a river. It is an interior town. When 
the war closed, its site was a tenantless wilderness, but it is 
now an industrial centre, the energy of whose more than 
twenty-five thousand inhabitants, and the resources, found 
chiefly within a few miles of the city limits, which they 
have made tributary to their prosperity, would be a marvel 
in any country. 

About six miles out upon the line of one of the rail¬ 
roads, which traverse the property of the Pratt Coal and 
Iron Company, are ranges of coke ovens which remind 
me of the Connellsville and Westmoreland coke regions 
of Pennsylvania; and about the same distance on another 
road, parallel to the former, and but two or three miles 
from it, we saw gangs of men quarrying iron ore by the 
use of the drill and explosives used by those engaged in 
quarrying stone. In view of the fact that the narrow 
strip of land which divides the coal and ore beds is a mass 
of limestone, it is not surprising that the over-sanguine 
men of Birmingham really believe that they will be able to 
make iron so cheaply as to soon close up the works of 
Pennsylvania and force her iron-masters and their em¬ 
ployes to re-establish themselves at Birmingham. The con¬ 
sequence of this faith is a wild speculation in town lots, 
which is without a parallel in my recollection. Just before 


SOME FACTS ABOUT FLORIDA. 


13 


the arrival of our party, a corner lot, one hundred feet 
square, which appeared to be swampy, because it was 
rather below grade, and in front of which was a peanut 
stand, had been sold for one hundred thousand dollars, or 
one thousand dollars per front foot. 


SOME FACTS ABOUT FLORIDA.i 

Florida has a history that extends back to 1512, cover¬ 
ing a period of nearly four hundred years ; yet in spite of 
this, and in spite, too, of its unequalled natural advantages, 
it has a smaller population, in proportion to its great size, 
than any other State in the Union, except, perhaps, Ne¬ 
vada and Colorado. A constantly rising tide of immigra¬ 
tion is now flowing in, and there has been a surprising 
increase in the number of inhabitants during the past ten 
years ; but some of the very choicest localities in the State 
are still in a state of nature, and there is room and verge 
enough for an additional million of busy and prosperous 
workers. For Florida is a very large State, — one of the 
largest in the Union, —with an area of nearly sixty thou¬ 
sand square miles, and, in proportion to its size, it has as 
large an average of productive soil as any other, except the 
prairie States of the West. Many portions, no doubt, are 
ill adapted for what are commonly regarded as the great 
staples of the country, but in the range and variety of its 
productions it is hardly equalled, and is certainly not sur¬ 
passed, by any other section of equal area. 

This fact in regard to Florida is usually overlooked by 

1 Florida for Tourists, Invalids, and Settlers. By George M. Barbour. 
D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1884. 


14 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


those who derive their ideas from the hasty conclusions of 
transient winter visitors. Each so-called “ season ” wit¬ 
nesses an influx of thousands of these visitors, in search of 
health or “on pleasure bent,” usually wealthy, and equipped 
with more prejudices than their well-filled travelling-bags 
would contain. Their chief desire is to find an elegant 
hotel, having “ all modern conveniences,” and once estab¬ 
lished there, to secure some cosy nook, or a broad veranda, 
where they may watch the fruits and flowers growing in 
the open air, breathe the soft balmy air, and lUzily enjoy 
all the luxuries and delights of June in January. 

For recreation, they ride to the nearest orange-groves, or 
indulge in a moonlight sail, or, if a little more adventurous 
and “ masculine,” take a few quiet fishing-trips, or hunt 
quail and duck. Once, at least, during their stay, they 
make the “grand tour” by the regulation route, —up the 
St. John’s to Palatka, Enterprise, and Sanford, up the 
darkly mysterious Ocklawaha (very few, on this excursion, 
even leave the boat), then down the river again and over 
to St. Augustine, where the longest stay is apt to be made, 
as its many points of interest and its animated social life 
render St. Augustine peculiarly attractive to the average 
pleasure-seeker. This, in the great majority of instances, 
is the full extent of their study and observation of the 
characteristics and resources of Florida; and, such being 
the case, it can hardly be regarded as surprising that they 
should represent it as a pleasant enough place of resort in 
winter for invalid.s, but a hot, unwholesome region in 
summer, poor in soil, arid of aspect, the haunt of alligators, 
reptiles, and insects. 

It need hardly be pointed out, however, that the true 
capabilities of a great State cannot be dealt with ade- 


SOME FACTS ABOUT FLORIDA. 


15 


quately in this summary fashion ; and, as a matter of fact, 
Florida has a soil in which can be grown every variety of 
fruit, flower, garden vegetable, field-crop, or forest product, 
that grows in any temperate or semi-tropical region of the 
world. Every one has heard of its fabulous yield of oranges, 
lemons, and the like; and the stories told on this head are 
not always exaggerated. I have seen groves of orange- 
trees which produced from two hundred to four thousand 
dollars to the acre, and known of an acre of pineapples 
that, within'two years after the trees were cleared from its 
surface, yielded the owners (two bright young New York 
lads, by the way) eighteen hundred dollars. 

But these, and such as these, by no means exhaust the 
list of valuable products which Florida yields to the culti¬ 
vator. I have seen fields of wheat ripening in January 
that produced twenty-eight bushels to the acre ; corn that 
produced in the same month seventy bushels to the acre ; 
sugarcane that yielded one hundred and sixty dollars net 
profit to the acre ; common Irish potatoes producing two 
hundred bushels to the acre; fields of rice that paid a net 
profit of two hundred dollars an acre ; and cassava that 
netted one hundred and fifty dollars an acre. 

Watermelons and garden vegetables grow rapidly, attain 
great size, are of excellent quality, and, where convenient 
to city markets, or to lines of transportation, pay the pro¬ 
ducer from one hundred to one thousand dollars per acre. 
Of garden vegetables, three, and even four, crops are 
sometimes taken from the same tract within twelve 
months ; and of the entire list of strange or familiar farm 
and garden products, fruits, and flowers, you may, in a 
trip through the State, find growing an abundance. The 
largest peach-tree, undoubtedly, in America, is near Orange 


i6 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


City, in Volusia County, with a spread of branches over 
seventy feet. 

Nor is this all. I have seen bean-vines in their third 
year bearing as vigorously as when first planted ; pears 
growing on vines; peas growing on trees; and plants 
growing on nothing at all, — the latter being the common 
air-plants. Of live-stock, I have seen as large, fine, fat 
swine, and as neat cattle and sheep as in Vermont, New 
York, or Illinois ; and they can be raised and kept in good 
condition at so small a cost that comparison with Northern- 
raised stock is absurd. 

The climate of Florida in the winter months is simply 
delightful, and the summers are about as endurable as in 
most other portions of the United States. The summer 
of 1880 was said by all to be the hottest for many years, 
and the winter of 1880-1881 to be the coldest ; yet I can 
affirm from the sure basis of personal experience that they 
were both healthy and agreeable, even to a newcomer. It 
seems absolutely impossible that any human being, or any 
living creature able to move about, should really suffer 
from either cold or heat, or from hunger, in Florida. It is 
asserted (and meets with no dispute) that no case of star¬ 
vation, of freezing, of sunstroke, or of hydrophobia was 
ever known in the State. 

But there is one thing to be remembered in connection 
with all this —and it is forgotten oftener than would be 
supposed : even Florida is not the garden of Eden, and a 
man cannot live here like the lilies of the field, “ which toil 
not, neither do they spin.” Florida soil and climate can 
and will do a great deal, but living without labor is not 
possible, and here as elsewhere the great law prevails, that 
in the sweat of his brow shall man eat his bread. The 


SOME FACTS ABOUT FLORIDA. 


17 


true advantage which Florida offers is that by little labor 
can much comfort be enjoyed, and the better directed the 
labor, the greater the comfort. 

It should also be remembered that there are three kinds 
of Florida — three Floridas, so to speak — each distinct in 
soil, climate, and productions ; and it is because of this 
that the people of other sections, as they read about the 
State in short newspaper sketches, or in pamphlets pub¬ 
lished in the interests of some special locality, are apt to 
draw erroneous inferences. For instance, the winter of 
1880-1881 was exceptionally severe everywhere, making 
itself felt even in Florida ; and the Northern and foreign 
I reader, learning that fruits were destroyed, garden crops 
hopelessly ruined, oranges frozen on the trees by thou¬ 
sands, in fact that cold and frost played havoc in Florida 
as well as elsewhere, doubtless came to the conclusion that 
it was not much of a tropical State, after all. Well, these 
things happened, just as reported. The frost came, and 
’ immense damage was done, and much loss inflicted. Yet 
! the fact is that the section thus visited included but a 
small portion of the State — only the northern and a por- 
; tion of middle Florida. A large portion of the State was 
1 not, and never is, visited by frosts that kill. So that, while 
the reports were true, they were not the whole truth, and 
there were many districts to which they did not apply at 
I all. 

! The three natural divisions under which Florida must 
be described, if it is to be described accurately, may be 
classified as the Northern or Temperate, the Semi-tropical, 
and the Tropical. 

Northern Florida, especially the western section of it, 
in soil, productions, and general appearance, closely re- 
c 




i8 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


sembles regions much farther north. It is a land of live- H 
stock, of corn, wheat, cotton, cane, jute, rice, ramie, j 
potatoes, apples, grapes, peaches, figs; in fact, all the prod- i 
nets of fields, forests, and gardens of a northern clime, „ 
with a few of the hardier of southern products. The 
tropical hanana, pineapple, etc., do not grow there, nor the 
orange or lemon as a crop for profit. Its soil is excellent; 
its surface is rolling and hilly, with grand forests, rocks, 
springs, and streams ; and the roads are firm and good. 

It is not tropical, hut is very picturesque and homelike, 
and, to the Northern visitor, is the most agreeable portion 
of the State. Better live-stock, or crops, cannot be pro¬ 
duced in the world, in greater abundance, or with less 
expense and labor, than grow here; but they are not 
tropical crops. Such is Northern Florida, where frosts 
and “ cold snaps ” are not only possible, but frequently 
occur. 

Middle Florida is that portion of the State lying between 
the twenty-eighth and thirtieth parallels, and may be 
termed Semi-tropical Florida. It is the region where many 
of the products of both the temperate and tropical climes 
may be found growing side by side ; where the orange, 
lemon, fig, guava, citron, grape, and all garden vegetables 
may be found growing, for profit, in the open air, all the 
year round. It is where cotton, cane, rice, and all field- 
crops pay best, and where wheat, corn, and live-stock are 
noticeably less productive than a little farther north. The 
soil here is mostly of a sandy character, and begins to have 
the characteristic appearance of a tropical soil, while the 
surface is generally flat and uninteresting, with occasional 
slightly rolling tracts. There are but few streams or lakes, 
except in the central portion — known to the residents as 



SOME FACTS ABOUT FLORIDA. 


19 


the Orange Lake region — where there are several quite 
large-sized lakes, which are of very attractive appearance. 

Large orange-groves are found growing in all parts of 
this region, and thousands of trees are being set out yearly. 
Hundreds of settlers there — especially along the line of 
the Transit Railroad, that runs from Fernandina to Cedar 
Keys, and its branches — in the vicinity of Starke, Waldo, 
Gainesville, and of Ocala and Leesburg, are engaged in 
raising vegetables of all kinds for the Northern markets. 
Thousands of crates of green peas, tomatoes, beans, cu¬ 
cumbers, onions, cabbages, cauliflower, spinach, celery, 
lettuce, beets, etc., and carloads of watermelons, are 
gathered and shipped to all points North in January, Feb¬ 
ruary, March, and April. It is an industry that has, in a 
few years, grown to great proportions, and, when the season 
is at all favorable, repays those engaged handsomely. In 
many cases profits of several hundreds of dollars (upward 
of a thousand dollars are known of in several cases) have 
been made in a single season, from an acre, or but little 
more, of some special crop that fortunately ripened and 
reached the market at the right moment. Strawberries 
here grow abundantly, and with proper care and culture 
yield immense crops, repaying wonderful profits. I know 
of several cases where the clear profit, netted from an 
acre, was almost fabulous. This is rapidly becoming a 
leading crop or industry of the State. 

South Florida comprises all that region of mainland, and 
innumerable keys or islands, great and small, lying south 
of the twenty-eighth parallel, and is the really truly tropical 
Florida, the Italy, the Spain, the Egypt, of the United 
States. In this region frosts rarely come, and every fruit, 
flower, shrub, plant, or product that grows in any tropical 


20 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


region of the world grows, or can be grown, here. Either 
on its Atlantic breezy, rocky coast, its hot, torrid, south 
end shores, or its balmy Gulf coast, or within its vast 
interior, — the famous Everglades region, — in all these 
prolific tropical soils, can something of profit be grown ; 
though, of course, the farther south, the more surely can 
the really tropical products be counted upon. It is the 
region of the pineapple, banana, cocoanut, guava, sugar- 
apple, breadfruit, sugarcane, almond, fig, olive, and all the 
innumerable list of tropical fruits. 


ORANGE CULTURE IN FLORIDA.^ 

The orange is by far the most important of the semi- 
tropical fruits grown in Florida, and its culture is rapidly 
becoming the leading industry of the State. In nearly all 
sections it is found growing either in fields or house- 
gardens as common and as natural to the climate and 
locality as the apple in the colder States. Whether or 
not it is indigenous is as yet an unsettled question, but 
the weight of evidence seems to be in favor of the idea 
that it was first introduced by the Spaniards, and that the 
many wild groves of “sour” oranges that are now found 
in various localities are simply the result of that deteriora¬ 
tion which all the cultivated fruits undergo when left for 
long periods to run riot in a state of nature. It is well 
known that the apple, left to itself for a sufficient period, 
will ultimately revert to the “crab”; and the difference 
between the “crab” and the choice varieties of the eating 

1 Florida for Tourists, Invalids, and Settlers. By George M. Barbour. 
D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1884. 


ORANGE CULTURE IN FLORIDA. 


21 


apple is about the same as the difference between the wild 
“sour” orange and the cultivated “sweet.” 

Since the earliest settlement, apparently, oranges have 
been grown in Florida, but in a very careless, desultory 
way. It is only since the war that any special attention 
has been given to their production, or any effort made to 
cultivate them for profit; and what is sometimes called 
the “orange craze” has developed within the past six or 
eight years. The financial panic of 1873 caused many 
people who were educated and shrewd to seek other and 
less precarious opportunities for investment than are 
afforded by ordinary “business.” Many of these, gather¬ 
ing together the wrecks of their fortunes, came to Florida, 
and, quickly perceiving the commercial value of this and 
similar fruits, set the “boom” going that has already 
attained immense proportions, and is increasing annually 
with gigantic strides. At present the orange is undoubtedly 
the staple product of the State. It is to Florida what cattle 
are to Texas, corn and pork to Illinois, wheat to Iowa, and 
peaches to Delaware. 

An orange-tree is a very attractive sight at all seasons 
of the year, with a straight, symmetrical, upright trunk 
covered with a smooth, sleek, pale-gray bark, and graceful 
curving branches which spread in all directions, and are 
always clothed with an abundant foliage of rich, glossy, 
dark-green leaves ; that is, if the tree is well cared for. 
Its regular blossoming season is the spring, but trees may 
• be seen in blossom at all seasons and sometimes one may 
see on the same tree blossoms and green and mature 
fruit. The blossom is a small star-shaped flower, snow- 
white, and of a waxy look. The oranges ripen from late 
in November until early in March, depending somewhat 


22 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


upon the variety and the season ; and it would be difficult 
to imagine a more fascinating spectacle than a grove or 
even a single tree, when fully laden with its ripe, golden- 
hued, luscious fruit. 

The orange is a very hardy tree in its own natural habi¬ 
tat and under the right conditions, cold being its chief 
enemy. It is sociable, too, and appears to like human 
companionship ; it being a noticeable fact that those trees 
that are nearest inhabited dwellings are usually the largest 
and most prolific. It continues to grow until thirty or 
forty years of age, and is estimated to afford a productive 
yield for at least a hundred years. In a famous grove in 
the northern part of the State stands a tree known to be 
upward of eighty years old, yet it has every appearance 
of youthful vigor, and bears enormous crops. Orange- 
trees are hardly in what can be called their prime until 
after they are twenty years old, and then they increase in 
value for at least twenty years more. 


A CITY OF SEA-SHELLS.i 

The City of St. Augustine, in addition to its historical 
interest as the oldest city in the United States, is rapidly 
coming into importance as a winter resort, not alone for 
invalids who seek the balmy air of Florida, but for people 
of .good health and abundant means, who go there to 
escape the snow, slush, and ice of our Northern winters. 
The erection of the new hotels which, in combination with 
the climate, attract the luxuriously disposed tourist, has to 

1 A City of Sea-Shells. By Allan Forman. Cosmopolitan Magazine, 
March, 1889. 


A CITY OF SEA-SHELLS. 


23 


a certain extent modernized the ancient appearance of the 
town ; but whole streets of the old houses still remain, and 
the new buildings have been designed in such perfect 
harmony with the atmosphere of the place that they add 
to, rather than detract from, its picturesqueness. Even 
the old cathedral, which was built in 1790, and was par¬ 
tially destroyed by fire in 1887, has been so cleverly re¬ 
stored that few can tell where the original leaves off and 
the new structure begins. 

There is a delightful mellowness of color in the coquina 
cement of which the cathedral, the sea-wall, the old fort, 
and, indeed, most of St. Augustine is built, that lends a 
pleasing air of antiquity to the buildings, even while they 
are in the first blush of absolute newness. It is a color, or 
rather the town has a tone of color, which is peculiarly its 
own. You may catch a suggestion of it in some of the old 
adobe missions of Spanish California ; but there is the dif¬ 
ference between the two which must always exist between 
mud and the delicate sea-shells of t!ie ocean beach. No 
words can describe it ; there is no tint known in our lan¬ 
guage which exactly expresses the color tone. It shines 
from myriads of points as if encrusted with diamonds, yet 
it is as soft as the finest velvet. Perhaps a description of 
how it is made will convey the most adequate idea of this 
elusive color. 

Across the blue bay, where the white sails of the 
pleasure-boats swell in the warm breeze, and the graceful 
steam yachts lie at anchor, there is a sandy strip of island, 
about a mile wide and some seventeen miles long. The 
middle ridge of this island is topped with a growth of 
azaleas, stubby oaks, and palmettos, and standing in the 
midst is the round tower of the Anastasia Island light- 


24 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


house, painted in spiral stripes of black and white, and 
adding such a striking feature to the landscape that some 
irreverent wag dubbed it “the Ponce de Leon barber’s 
shop,” a name which has clung to it with some persist¬ 
ency ever since. But the backbone of Anastasia Island is 
not of sand, as the careless observer might suppose. It is 
made up of myriads of tiny sea-shells, worn smooth and 
brown by the ceaseless wash of the ocean for centuries. 
They are neither white nor brown nor yellow, but a com¬ 
bination of all three; just that delicious creamy-brown 
that one sees on the crust of a freshly baked Vienna roll. 
The simile is a homely one, but it comes more nearly to 
the truth than anything else I can think of. In these 
shells we have one ingredient of the coquina composition. 
The other is the cold-gray Portland cement of commerce, 
such as we line our cellars and cisterns with. The combi¬ 
nation of the two gives a warm, soft, living gray, which, for 
lack of better name, might be called “St. Augustine gray.” 

It may seem that I have been over-particular as to 
exact hues and shades, but that is a characteristic of St. 
Augustine ; its color is as much a part of its attractiveness 
as its balmy air, its orange-groves, or its rose-gardens. 
Nowhere in the world, except in Southern Spain, or 
Northern Africa, can such blue skies be seen ; and the 
red-tiled roofs capping the coquina walls ; the whole rising 
above the shining green of the orange and lemon trees, 
and standing out against the sky in graceful gables, 
towers, and minarets, form a picture which is as pleasing 
to the eye as the soft southern breeze, laden with the per¬ 
fume of roses and orange blossoms, is to the other senses. 

There is nothing which is calculated to make the 
Northern tourist more thoroughly satisfied with his sur- 


A CITY OF SEA-SHELLS. 


25 


roundings in this quaint old city than reading his home 
papers. To sit under a tree, clad in summer flannels, and 
read about the snow, slush, and blizzards of the North 
gives one a curious feeling of contentment, mingled with 
doubt as to the correctness of the date of the newspaper. 
It is hard to realize, as you take your first walk through 
the St. Augustine orange-groves and rose-gardens, that 
only two days before you were shivering on the streets of 
a Northern city. 

It is Northern energy, liberality, and enterprise which 
have made St. Augustine unique in the world as a watering- 
place. The San Marco, the Magnolia, the St. George, and 
the Florida House are all above the average of winter re¬ 
sort hotels. Until two years ago the San Marco, with its 
broad piazzas and magnificent sea-view, was the finest 
hotel south of Washington. Mr. Henry M. Flagler came, 
and under his conjuring rod of gold sprung up three of 
the finest hotels in the world,—the Ponce de Leon, the 
Alcazar, and the Cordova. Mr. Flagler s work for St. 
Augustine did not stop with building these palaces ; he 
drained the town, he built churches, and repaired the 
roads ; the antiquities he has touched with a loving hand, 
restoring them where restoration was necessary. He has 
made it the healthiest town in the United States. When 
the terrible yellow fever was desolating Jacksonville, St. 
Augustine did not have a single case. He put on the 
vestibuled trains which run from New York in thirty-six 
hours ; and, single-handed, he has infused Northern push 
and enterprise into the sleepy old city of sea-shells. If he 
succeeds in making St. Augustine a winter Newport,— 
and the indications are that he will succeed, —he will reap 
a profit as magnificent as his investment. 


26 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


HOW LARGE IS “THE WEST”.?i 

Near the close of the last century Erance was making 
wonderful growth in imperial territory and power. Her 
increase was so great and convulsive as to jar every throne 
in Europe. Edmund Burke anxiously turned the attention 
of Great Britain to her colossal rival, and spoke of ambi¬ 
tious France as “something which awed and commanded 
the imagination.” 

How large, territorially, would the France of to-day be 
in this country ? Suppose Texas to be a circular lake, and 
France a circular island; the island could be anchored 
centrally in the lake out of sight of land twenty-two miles 
from any point on the encircling shore. The vastness of 
this State of Texas — equal to the capacity of England 
five times, and of Massachusetts thirty-four — is not so 
very much overstated by the bold figure of Mr. Webster, 
in his yth of March speech, “So vast that a bird cannot 
fly over it in a week.” One accurate statement in arith¬ 
metical figures is so startling as at first to provoke an 
honest disbelief. Nevertheless it is true that if the entire 
living population of the globe — fourteen hundred millions 
— were divided into families of five persons each, all those 
families could be located in Texas, each family having a 
house-lot of half an acre, and then leave more than seventy 
millions of family lots untaken. 

Such surprises are constantly recurring if one follows 
up an ordinary school geography with questions of com- 

1 The United States of Yesterday and of To-morrow. By William 
Barrows, D.D. Roberts Brothers, Boston, 1888. 


HOW LARGE IS “THE WEST”? 


27 


parison. In the days of the controversy with England over 
Oregon, some thought it too small an item for so great a 
peril of the peace and blood of the two countries. The 
item puts on ampler and more important extent and issue 
to-day, when our portion of the territory then in dispute 
— Oregon, Washington Territory, and Idaho — is equal 
in extent to Great Britain and Ireland twice told, with a 
remnant nearly as large as Connecticut. 

If Colorado were crowded into the map of Europe, it 
would crowd out almost as much as Belgium, the Nether¬ 
lands, Portugal, Switzerland, Greece, and Wales. If we 
were able to take immigration of acres, we could locate in 
Dakota, acre for acre. Great Britain, Ireland, Belgium, and 
the Netherlands. 

Suppose a parallelogram be made to corner on Milwau¬ 
kee, with a line due west to the Pacific, and by the ocean 
shore north to our northwestern corner, and thence on our 
boundary line due east, and to Lake Superior and down to 
the point of starting, that enclosure, being about three 
hundred and fifty-seven miles by seventeen hundred and 
fifty-six, would cut up into one hundred and twenty-nine 
Connecticuts. 

Yet another illustration from that region will serve to 
impress on us the magnitude of our interior and western 
areas. In 1864 Abraham Lincoln signed the bill granting 
the Northern Pacific Railroad. As a trunk road it might 
be assumed to open up a belt of wild land four hundred 
miles wide and eighteen hundred long. This amount of 
unsettled country the charter proposed to take from its 
prehistoric occupants, Indians and buffaloes, and give it to 
agriculture, manufactures, commerce, schoolhouses, and 
churches, voters, and jurors. That belt would contain 


28 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


England, Scotland, and Ireland ; Spain and Portugal; Bel¬ 
gium and the Netherlands; Norway, Denmark, Sweden, 
and eight Palestines. And yet the most eastern depot of 
that road is fifteen hundred miles west of New England 
tide-water. A man visits those eleven States of the Old 
World, and is gone a year on the long tour, and after his 
return he perhaps lectures or publishes a book on his 
travels. The next generation may travel as far in the cars 
on that belt and see as many marvels of growth as he 
would hoary wonders abroad, and not leave home. 

I shall never recover from the overwhelming impressions 
of the vastness of our great valley lying between the 
Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains, as they came on 
me when I first went down the eastern slope of it. It was 
in the autumn of 1840, when our steamer swung into the 
Ohio at Guyandotte, and we were seven days of fair run¬ 
ning to St. Louis. Current and steam for a week to go 
down one side of this valley! Since then I have seen 
more of it, and only to deepen the thought of its immen¬ 
sity. Its northern rim is perpetually fringed by arctic 
lichens and mosses and firs around their ice-beds, and its 
southern is perpetually fragrant with the rose and magno¬ 
lia and orange-blossom. 

If you are familiar mainly with the valley of the Thames 
or Tweed or Merrimac or Hudson, struggle a moment 
with your fancy to measure this great valley of a continent. 
As aid and stepping-stones, recall your reading of Roman 
history when that Empire had its greatest extent. Con¬ 
sider how beyond the horizon in all directions Roman 
legions swarmed, capturing the great cities of the world, 
and their returning to the Eternal City leading processions 
of kings and nobles as captives and suitors. Yet this 


AROUND LAKE SUPERIOR. 


29 


valley has capacity for the entire Roman Empire in the 
days of its broadest expanse, and half another! The 
sword of a Caesar could never point so far over territory 
it claimed and awed as the peaceful hand of an American 
President is extended to receive the votes and congratula¬ 
tions of the Republic. Gibbon gives the greatest area of 
the Roman Empire at 1,600,000 square miles, and our 
valley is 2,450,000. 

Europe is cut up into twenty areas, with as many gov¬ 
ernments. They range from imperial Russia to the prin¬ 
cipality of Monaco, embracing six square miles — about 
one-fourth of the extent of a Yankee township. The 
twenty realms of Europe, the entire continent, could be 
located within the United States, and then there would 
remain uncovered all New England, New York, New 
Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. This 
statement will not surprise any one who considers that the 
United States is nineteen times larger than France, twenty 
times larger than Spain, and seventy-eight times larger 
than England. 


AROUND LAKE SUPERIOR.^ 

Seldom have civilization and commerce been seen 
winning their way against the wilderness with faster and 
more firmly planted footsteps than in the neighborhood 
of Lake Superior. This is especially true of the Wiscon¬ 
sin and Minnesota shores; but the development of re¬ 
sources and means of access to the hitherto remote shores, 

1 All Around Lake Superior. By W. Hosea Ballou. Cosmopolitan 
Magazine^ February, 1889. 


30 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


and the building up of towns along the eastern and north¬ 
eastern border have been nearly as remarkable. 

Until a few years ago this great body of fresh water — 
the largest on the face of the earth, and one of the earliest 
known districts of this continent •— had only a few ports, 
where fish, lumber, mining products, and the Indian trade 
sustained a comparatively insignificant commerce. But 
now populous, important ports, the termini of railway 
systems, and the seat of an enormous commerce in grain 
and merchandise, as well as in raw materials, are rising 
and flourishing on its picturesque margin. 

An exceptionally rapid progress of this kind has taken 
place, as has been mentioned, along the southwestern 
shore, where forests of valuable timber cover a hilly and 
rocky region, whose declivities conceal deposits of iron 
and other ores, whose glades are fertile, and only await 
the plough to be made agriculturally useful, all of whose 
rivers can exert a water power; and where shooting and 
fishing, invigorating air and delightful landscapes, add 
enjoyment to utility. 

The principal elevation in this rugged region is a line 
of wooded and rocky summits, which stretch from Wis¬ 
consin into Michigan along a line somewhat parallel with 
the south shore of the lake, and are called the Gogebic 
Mountains, an Indian word, to be pronounced with both 
^’s hard, and the accent on the middle syllable. In 1873 
Captain Nathaniel Moore, a strolling miner, wandered 
across these mountains prospecting. He came to a place 
where a cyclone had preceded him and denuded a great 
scarp on the face of the hills. Following its path, he saw 
rich ores clinging to the roots of upturned trees, and the 
flooded streams which swept down the ravines were crim- 


AROUND LAKE SUPERIOR. 


31 


son with the blood of the richest Bessemer iron in an 
almost pure state. 

It took ten years to convince the cold world of capital 
that wealth lay on the surface of the Gogebic Range await¬ 
ing the advent of labor to gather it; but when once this 
conviction was enforced by those interested, capital flowed 
in, railways were built into and through the hills to the 
lake ports, and settlements sprang up everywhere. All 
this stimulated the shore towns, and under its influence, 
combined with other causes, struggling ports, like Duluth, 
Ashland, Bayfield, and others, throve and increased; while 
new towns of the interior, Hurley, Bessemer, Wakefield, 
and Washburn, rose from nothing to great local importance. 
Duluth has now acquired a population of 45,000.^ Ashland 
has now about 12,000 people. In brief, the influx into 
the region surrounding Lake Superior since 1882 amounts 
to fully 200,000 people. 

Duluth, having the unrivalled prestige on Lake Supe¬ 
rior, demands first mention. It is no farther from New 
York, by water, than Chicago, while it is 300 miles nearer 
the grain-producing regions of Dakota, and 500 miles 
nearer to the Pacific Ocean. The harbor of Duluth is the 
most remarkable on the Great Lakes. A long, narrow 
sand dune, seven miles in length, land-locks a magnificent 
bay, which has sufficient depth and area to accommodate 
the combined merchant marine of the lakes ; it is called 
Minnesota Point, and offers extraordinary facilities as a 
site for factories. On the mainland side of the harbor 
there rises abruptly a long chain of rocky projections, at 
the base of which, and clinging to the sides, is the city, in 
whose name is perpetuated the fame of one of the very 
earliest of French exploring traders in the Northwest. 

1 By census of 1890, 33,115. 


32 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


Thus the city is protected on the west from great storms, 
while its harbor is shielded from severe easterly gales. 

Duluth originated so recently, and under such auspicious 
circumstances, that it had the benefit of the experience of 
other cities, and could conduct its growth on correct prin¬ 
ciples. From the outset, provision was made for expan¬ 
sion. Terminal facilities have been so arranged that all 
railways may enter without hindrance or limit as to num¬ 
ber. Such great railway corporations as the Northern 
Pacific, the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba, the 
Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Omaha, the Duluth 
and St. Paul, the Canadian Pacific, the Wisconsin Central, 
and the Milwaukee, Lake Shore, and Western already 
have termini here, while several lesser roads are in active 
existence, or in immediate prospect. It is said that nearly 
fifty companies have been incorporated whose railroads 
already reach Duluth, or expect to; and each of these 
railroads implies a shipping traffic and port-service corre¬ 
sponding to its pretensions, for it is as the best harbor at 
the western end of the lake, and the most western point of 
navigation in the Union, that Duluth finds a reason for its 
existence, and a promise of permanence. 

There are miles of slips, along which warehouses and 
coal-bins are arranged, so that vessels may be unloaded 
and loaded simultaneously. The many elevators occupy 
a district of their own, and are arranged in rows. In fact, 
each commercial product has a distinct wharf-area of its 
own, and is classified for shipment in a special locality. 
The elevator capacity is no less than 25,000,000 of bushels, 
and 20,000,000 of bushels of grain are now shipped annually, 
besides 2,000,000 barrels of flour. The lumber exports 
alone amount to 300,000,000 feet annually. 


AROUND LAKE SUPERIOR. 


33 


Some seventy-five miles east of Duluth, at the head of 
the beautiful Chequamegon Bay, stands Ashland, Wis¬ 
consin, the second in importance of the port-cities of Lake 
Superior, and which owes its rise and strength to the 
development of the iron mines in its neighborhood, and to 
the harbor facilities, which have invited railways to make 
it their shipping point for ores, lumber, etc. 

Here are three of the largest ore docks in the world. 
One of them is 1405 feet in length, including 950 feet of 
trestle approach. Its width is 52 feet and 10 inches; 
height above water, 40 feet; and it required 1325 miles 
of timbers to construct it. It has 234 ore pockets, with 
a storage capacity of 26,000 tons, but it can carry 106,000 
tons. The ore is discharged into vessels, either from 
the ore cars on the dock or from the ore pockets, by 
means of sheet-iron troughs. The two other docks are 
scarcely less capacious, and all are a scene of intense 
activity day and night. Trains of ores are arriving on 
two or three different roads every few minutes, and the 
wharves are lined with steamers and sailing vessels 
receiving their cargoes. 

Ashland’s admirable situation upon the bluffs overlook¬ 
ing the lake and island-dotted bay, its proximity to the 
many lakes and rivers, where good sport may be had, and 
its bracing climate during the warm months of the year 
have brought it into great prominence of late as a summer 
resort. An immense hotel. The Chequamegon, faces the 
very large bay, and is crowded both summer and winter 
with health and pleasure seeking guests. In front are the 
Apostle Islands, with beautiful shore lines, rich in pict¬ 
uresque views, and daily accessible by a pleasure steamer. 
Here are many antiquities, remains of the civilization es- 


D 


34 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


tablished by Pere Marquette. Here, too, are remnants of 
the Chippewa Indians, who have a reservation twelve 
miles from Ashland, and are largely civilized. 

The noted copper ledges of Lake Superior seem con¬ 
fined to a comparatively small strip along its southern 
shores. A few years ago the mining was mainly at the 
surface, or near it. Lately important changes have taken 
place. Over 2,000,000 tons of copper have been added to 
the sum total excavated, and all from lesser to greater 
depths under ground. Many of the mines are now so 
deep that the interior heat of the earth makes it necessary 
to use ice for the comfort of the laborer confined in the 
heated atmosphere. 

As soon as it has been raised to the surface, the ore is 
passed through the rock crushers, then taken to a stamp- 
mill and pounded into fine mud and sand. It then runs 
through a system of sieves and jiggers and over slime 
tables, where, by an elaborate mechanical process, the 
copper is separated. It is then taken to a smelter, cast 
into ingots, and sent to market. As a ton of rock con¬ 
tains about fifteen pounds of copper, it requires the treat¬ 
ment of 133 tons of rock to produce one ton of pure 
refined copper. 

As the workings have descended further down into the 
earth, invention has found means of facilitating the exca¬ 
vation of ore by steam drills and costly hoisting and other 
machinery. There has been an addition of electric light¬ 
ing, ponderous engines, and hoisting apparatus, compres¬ 
sors of air, vertical shafts, and cages. The civilization of 
the mining settlements has kept pace in improvement, 
until now it is a pleasant, as well as a profitable, place 
to spend one’s life. 


AROUND LAKE SUPERIOR. 


35 


At the eastern extremity of the lake is one of the head¬ 
quarters of the extensive fishery of this region, though 
this business is more systematically conducted, perhaps, at 
the western end of the lake, whence some 15,000 tons of 
fresh-water trout and white fish are annually sent to 
Chicago and other markets. (The catch at the eastern 
end of the lake goes mainly to Detroit and Eastern 
cities.) 

One day I made a trip in the tug which collects the 
catch in the environs of the Apostle Islands. We started 
at Bayfield, the most northern port of Wisconsin, and a 
pretty summer resort. From this point we travelled sixty 
miles through the largest netting district. Here I wit¬ 
nessed the hauling of a three-mile net, and also its casting. 
This enormous net extends entirely across the widest 
channel among the islands, along the bottom. The fish, 
in attempting to pass through it in schools, are entangled 
in its fine meshes,—become literally wound in linen,— 
and then give up the battle. A man stands on the rail of 
the tug with a gaff to hook those which are not sufficiently 
entangled, or which are so large and powerful as to 
threaten escape. Two men grasp the fish as the net 
comes over the rail and toss them to other men, who 
dress them. About a ton and a half of white fish and 
trout were taken from it on this occasion. 

The gill net is the most common snare in use, while 
the pound net is set near the shores. Thus it happens 
that the entire water among the Apostle Islands is snared 
with gill nets in the channels, and with pound nets near 
the shores. The same is also true of the watery region 
around Isle Royal. The tug which I boarded spent most 
of the day operating the great gill net, after which it 


36 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


visited all the lesser fishing camps and collected the 
catch of the day. 

The whole fishery of this bay is under control of a 
Chicago firm, which has ice-houses at Duluth, Bayfield, 
and elsewhere, and regulates the price of fish to suit its 
convenience. The firm also has many powerful fishing 
tugs, and one large steamer, engaged in the trade exclu¬ 
sively. At Duluth is a government hatchery, which 
annually turns loose into the lake hundreds of thousands 
of young fishes to supply the great drain for market. 


CHICAGO.! 

Julian Ralph, whose concise description of the Paris 
Exposition was among the best yet published, wrote of 
Chicago, after the National Convention, thus : “ ^ A frank 
confession is good for the soul,’ says the proverb. I went 
to Chicago, June 17, 1888, much prejudiced against the 
city. I had been there three times between trains, so to 
speak, and I had the bad fortune not to be able to stay 
long enough to understand the town. The Convention 
was called, and I with it. I lived in Chicago twelve days. 
That is long enough for a cosmopolitan. If a city palls on 
him in that length of time, when he is inclined to view it 
fairly, it must have serious faults. Chicago did not bore 
me. In spite of the fact that I abused it in my soul, it did 
not bore me. The more I saw of it the more I liked it. 
The longer I lived there, and the more I tested its quali¬ 
ties, the more I enjoyed being in it. 

1 Chicago’s Candidacy for the World’s Fair of 1892. By Charles B. Far- 
well, U. S. Senator. Cosmopolitan Magazine for 1889. 


CHICAGO. 


37 


Twelve days satisfied me that Chicago is a great, a 
lovely, and a wonderful city. There are plenty of things 
she has not, that Berlin, London, and New York have; 
but there is nothing of which, in proportion to her size, 
she has not in greater abundance and perfection than all 
these places put together. She has not only the wonder¬ 
ful lake front, but she has utilized it so that the Thames 
Embankment and the waterside at Havre are poor beside 
it. She has not only great parks, but they are bound 
(when the trees grow) to be the finest in the world, by 
reason of their situation on the water front, their acreage, 
and their roadways, and the system of drives they connect 
with. She has the best drives on the continent. But I 
love Chicago best of all for her pavements. 

“ As for the energy, the thrift, the growth, and the vim 
of Chicago I have nothing to say. Not because there is 
nothing to say, but because English is insufficient for it, 
and that is the only language I know.” 

Another New Yorker, Joseph Howard, Jr., wrote about 
the same time a letter of like import, from which is taken 
the following: “ Chicago is a marvel not alone to capital¬ 
ists, to builders in stone and wood and furnishings, but to 
men of observation and travel, who looked upon its earlier 
prosperity with astonishment, and who regard its present 
seven-league steps toward the uppermost of metropolitan 
imperialism with undisguised amazement. As an illustra¬ 
tion of American possibility, Chicago stands unrivalled. 
The felicitous combination of capital, brains, and physical 
opportunity have made it, in a comparative twinkling of 
an eye, the proudest monument America can show to 
intelligent industry. 

“ But why is Chicago called a summer city ? By reason 


38 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


of its temperature, of its drives, of its manifold physical 
superiorities over every other city in the country. Chicago 
at night is cool. The private residences of Chicago are 
unequalled, as a whole, by those of any city in the country. 
I am not prepared to discuss your public buildings, or paint 
your social portraiture ; but in every avenue likely to be 
sought by a stranger, whether he be your guest for pleas¬ 
ure or business, for the ordinary on-goings of social inter¬ 
course, or the fierce pushings of journalistic endeavor, I 
cheerfully bear a twenty-eight years’ experienced testimony 
in favor of the cleanliness, good order, comfort, and recre¬ 
ational advantages of Chicago, as the summer city par 
excellence!' 

Murat Halstead also wrote : “ Chicago has several times 
surprised me : first, when Abraham Lincoln was nominated 
for the Presidency, by the extraordinary evidence of her 
vital forces; again, when she was destroyed by fire, and 
her ruins resembled, as Bayard Taylor said, those of the 
Temple of Greece two thousand years old ; again, when 
she arose from the ashes in greater splendor; and again, 
four years ago, in the revelation of her extensive boule¬ 
vards and parks, and in a new growth of magnificence,— 
such superb edifices as the Pullman Building, the type of 
Chicago ; and still more and greater were the surprises of 
the great Convention. The new and lofty structures seem 
to prefigure the splendors of the coming time. I took off 
my hat before the ‘ Rookery,’ the most noble business 
building in the world, incomparable, with the exception of 
two or three remarkable exhibitions of architectural achieve¬ 
ments in the same neighborhood. And I have to confess 
at last surprise in the excellence and wonderful adaptability 
of the unfinished hall in which the late Convention was 


CHICAGO. 


39 


held, — a hall destined, upon completion, to be the finest 
auditorium in the world.” 

“ Not the ‘ Windy City,’ ” wrote Erastus Brainard, of Phil¬ 
adelphia, “ but the ‘Wonder City,’ or, using the epithetical 
comparison, it may be called the London of America.” 

John A. Sleicher, editor of the Albany Joimial, wrote : 
“ It pays an Eastern man to visit Chicago every year, and 
to be inoculated with the true views of restless enterprise 
and unrepressed enthusiasm. There is only one Chicago 
in the world, and that is on the shores of Lake Michigan, 
and we all feel proud of it.” 

Lloyd Breeze, of Michigan, concluded : “New York may 
be cosmopolitan, Boston cultured, Washington beautiful, 
Philadelphia pious, Cincinnati musical, and Baltimore the 
home of beautiful women ; but Chicago is American, — 
the one purely and distinctively American city on this 
continent.” 


MINNEAPOLIS AND HER ELOUR-MILLS.i 

In this age of shams, adulterations, and frauds, it is a 
pleasure to become acquainted with a city that owes its 
growth and prosperity to the manufacture of a good, 
honest article, and to earnest efforts to improve the 
quality of that article so as to make it the best of its 
kind to be found in the markets of the world. Such a 
city is Minneapolis, in the State of Minnesota. Its 
remarkable development in recent years from an obscure 
village to a handsome, busy, energetic city of one hundred 

1 The Flour-Mills of Minneapolis. By Eugene V. Smali.ey. Century 
Magazine for May, 1886. 


40 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


and thirty thousand inhabitants is due partly to its saw¬ 
mills, but chiefly to its flour-mills. The latter have multi¬ 
plied in number and grown in dimensions and spread 
their names wherever commerce carries the breadstuffs of 
the West, because they make a grade of flour nowhere 
surpassed. The word Minneapolis on the head of a flour- 
barrel has become a guarantee of the excellence of its 
contents. 

The millers of Minneapolis have sought out the best 
inventions, avoided cheap processes, stopped at no ex¬ 
pense to get the best results, and trusted consumers to 
know a good thing and to buy it at a fair price. They 
have made a great deal of money ; other industries have 
gathered around their own, and in a remarkable short 
space of time a great community has assembled at the 
Falls of St. Anthony, exemplifying to a high degree the 
best characteristics of Western urban life — indomitable 
enterprise in business, joined to a love for the refinements 
and graces of a high civilization. 

Rapid as has been the growth of the place, there is 
nothing crude in its appearance. The business thorough¬ 
fares are better built than those of many Eastern towns 
of double its population ; the residence streets are broad, 
shady avenues, bordered by pretty houses, each standing 
alone in the midst of flowers and foliage, and each having 
an agreeable individuality; the public schools take rank 
with those of the New England cities; the numerous 
church edifices bespeak liberality and taste, and exhibit 
the large assortment of sects which seem to be essential, 
in new as well as old regions, to the expression of the re¬ 
ligious life of the United States; there is a good street-car 
system, a steam rapid-transit line, and, what is of more im- 



Pillsbury A Mill 































MINNEAPOLIS AND HER FLOUR-MILLS. 


41 



portance, the beginnings of a good sewerage system ; and 
the shops are spacious, and full of attractive wares. In¬ 
deed, one can live on as easy terms with modern culture 
and comfort in this new town on the Upper Mississippi 
as in Hartford, or Providence, or Albany, or any other 
of the second cities of the Eastern States, and enjoy, 
besides, all the peculiar movement and stimulus of West¬ 
ern life. 


Falls of St. Anthony—From East Side. 

All this has been achieved in the face of an obstacle 
such as no other among the new cities of the West has 
been compelled to encounter — the existence, close at 
hand, of an older town of considerable prestige, possessed 
of rail and water communication and of an established 






42 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


trade. The business centre of St. Paul is only seven 
miles distant from that of Minneapolis, and the corporate 
bounds of the two municipalities touch. 

The first and enduring impetus to the growth of Min¬ 
neapolis and St. Paul was the superb water-power furnished 
by the Mississippi River at the Falls of St. Anthony. The 
great river leaps over the soft limestone rocks in a sheer 
plunge of about twenty-five feet, which with the descent 
of the rapids above makes eighty-two feet fall within the 
limits of the city. Level banks on each side of the stream 
afforded ample opportunities for mill-sites, and the volume 
of water was so great that there was no fear of its failing 
in summer droughts. 

The pictures of the Falls of St. Anthony which most 
of us remember to have admired in the school geogra¬ 
phies bear no sort of resemblance to the real falls of 
to-day. There are no forests now, nor island, and no 
rocks, and in place of the wild fall there is only a 
planked water-slide that looks like a mill-dam — an enor¬ 
mous and magnificent mill-dam, truly, but nevertheless a 
mill-dam. The whole sweep of the fall has been covered 
with an ^‘apron” of planks to prevent the rocks from 
being worn away, and to save the cataract from being 
converted into a rapid. The real dam a short distance 
above the falls affords power to numerous saw-mills, and 
within it there is a boom to catch logs. In the winter 
and spring the falls, thus tamed and fettered, are still very 
beautiful, the rush of waters over the symmetrical curve 
of the dam affording a striking spectacle ; but in summer, 
when most of the volume of the current is taken out to 
fill the mill-races, there is little to be seen but an imposing 
structure of dry planks. 


MINNEAPOLIS AND HER FLOUR-MILLS. 


43 


The twenty-six great flouring-mills stand in single and 
double rows on both sides of the river below the falls. 
They consumed last year (1885) about 24,000,000 bushels 
of wheat, and made 5,450,163^ barrels of flour — an amount 
more than suflicient to supply with bread the entire popu¬ 
lation of the city of New York. The aggregate daily 
capacity of the Minneapolis flour-manufacturing concerns 
is 33,973 barrels, and their wheat-consuming capacity is 
35,000,000 bushels a year. Some one has estimated that 
the wheat demanded for the daily consumption of the 
mills requires for its transportation 266 cars, or a solid 
train of a mile and three-quarters in length, and that to 
move the daily product of flour and mill-stuff there are 
required 328 cars and sixteen locomotives, or more than 
two miles of solid train. 

When W. W. Eastman built the first mill at the Falls 
of St. Anthony, Minnesota flour was ranked as the poorest 
of any made in the West. Minneapolis might have kept 
on making low-grade flour to this day, remaining an insig¬ 
nificant town, were it not for the investigating brain of 
a French savant, Joseph Perrigault, who invented the 
middlings-purifier in i860. The invention was brought to 
this country by ex-Governor C. C. Washburn, of Wiscon¬ 
sin, in 1871, and put into one of his mills at Minneapolis. 
It was soon improved by Nathan La Croix and George T. 
Smith, practical millers, and in a little while surprising 
results were developed. The middlings-purifier machine, 
and The process of gradual-reduction milling, of which it 
forms a part, have built up the beautiful city of Minne¬ 
apolis, and sent a million of people out on the prairies of 
Minnesota and Dakota. What a wonderful result from a 
Frenchman’s studies of dust particles floating in the 
1 “The North Western Miller ” gives 9,377,635 barrels as the output for 1893. 


44 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


atmosphere and settling in the pigeon-holes of a writing- 
desk ! The statement seems extravagant, but it is within 
the bounds of fact. 

Before Perigault’s invention was adopted at Minne¬ 
apolis, the spring wheat of the Northwest was worth on 
an average thirty cents a bushel less than the winter 
wheat of Iowa, Missouri, and Kansas. Why ? Because 
the berry of the spring wheat is small, dark-colored, 
and hard, and its husk clings tightly. The old process 
of milling, while it answered well enough for the white, 
soft-berried winter wheat, did not thoroughly remove the 
bran from the spring wheat, and left the flour dark in 
color, and of inferior quality. Besides, the relative per¬ 
centage of flour obtained was small. It did not matter 
much if a little of the light-colored bran of the winter 
wheat was left in the flour, but any mixture of the dark 
bran of the spring wheat was at once apparent. 

With the enormous difference of thirty cents a bushel 
against them, farmers in Minnesota were at a serious dis¬ 
advantage in comparison with those of the winter-wheat 
belt. The settlement of the fertile prairies of Northern 
and Western Minnesota progressed very slowly. Nobody 
tried to raise wheat in the rich valley of the Red River of 
the North. Immigration poured into Kansas, but could 
not be coaxed into Dakota. All this was changed by the 
middlings-purifier and the new process of gradual-reduction 
milling. The spring wheat known as “ number one hard ” 
became the most valuable for the making of flour. 'The 
great natural product of the region came into brisk 
demand. From the hard wheat of the Northwest prairies 
a flour was made by the mills of Minneapolis which com¬ 
manded a higher price in New York than St. Louis winter 


SOME FACTS ABOUT IOWA. 


45 


wheat flour, until then the favorite among Western brands. 
Population poured into Minnesota and Dakota, railroads 
were built, towns sprang up as if by magic, and the barren 
plains were turned into wheat-fields. 


SOME FACTS ABOUT lOWA.i 

It is the practice of some Americans to proclaim that 
their own country is uninteresting in its natural scenery, 
and entirely too new to be picturesque. The great region 
of country between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers 
they seem to consider simply as a series of huge farms, 
somewhat fertile in the production of grain and live-stock, 
but with no diversity of landscape, and containing few 
scenes worthy of description or illustration. 

A justly favored locality is the blue-grass region of Ken¬ 
tucky, famous alike for its luxuriant pastures of blue grass, 
its fast horses and fine cattle, and its beautiful women. 
Unmistakable, however, is the fact that the luxuriance of 
the blue grass is the chief feature in the prosperity of rural 
Kentucky. This wonderful product, hardy, yet tender 
and succulent, seems to impart its own strength and beauty 
to every creature deriving sustenance from it. The blue- 
grass diet imparts not only beauty, symmetry, and strength 
to the horse, but gives fine grain and flavor to the mutton 
and beef. 

There is another blue-grass region which is destined to 
become as famous as its respected contemporary. That 
region is Southwestern Iowa, which some day will have a 

1 A Great Iowa Farm Region. By S. R. Davis. The Cosmopolitan Mag¬ 
azine for October, 1889. 


46 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


place, not only on the map, but in the traveller s note-book, 
as one of the ideal pastoral regions of the world. 

It is not claimed that Southwestern Iowa is the only 
portion of the West where the blue grass thrives. It 
grows abundantly in localities all over Iowa and Illinois 
and Missouri. It is a fact, however, that Southwestern 
Iowa is a natural grass country, where the blue grass pre¬ 
dominates, but where the soil is kind to all the tame 
grasses. There is certainly no region of country which 
exports more baled hay. The principal markets of this at 
present are in the South, — Nashville, Louisville, Atlanta, 
New Orleans, and all the large Southern cities being large 
consumers. 

It may seem strange to talk about winter pastures in a 
latitude so far north as Southern Iowa, but farmers and 
stockmen know their value. Horses, cattle, and sheep 
need little feed, except the blue-grass pasture, from early 
spring until the snow falls and the ground freezes ; and in 
winter, when the snow melts, the grass is as nutritious and 
palatable as in the spring. When, as often happens, there 
is a mild or “open ” winter, live-stock of all kinds flourish 
on these bountiful pastures with but little additional feed. 
Only recently have the people of this favored region 
awakened to a realization of its natural resources as a grass 
and stock country. 

The soil of Southwestern Iowa is a black, rich loam, 
somewhat impregnated with sand and lime, and old Ken¬ 
tuckians say in this respect it much resembles their famous 
blue-grass region. In wet seasons it has been noticeable 
that the yield of grass and hay was enormous, and upon 
the uplands no amount of rain, except floods and washouts, 
could destroy the certainty of a good crop of corn and 


SOME FACTS ABOUT IOWA. 


47 


small grain. But the past two seasons of extreme drought, 
unprecedented in the history of this region, has brought 
out another wonderful feature of Southwest Iowa, and that 
is the fact that few countries can stand drought so well. 
The crops of these seasons have averaged well with appar¬ 
ently more favorable seasons of the past. Indeed, there 
has been more baled hay shipped out of Southwestern 
Iowa within the past few months than during any similar 
period in its history. The soil is porous and seems to 
retain moisture like a sponge. 

The eastern portion of the region is a rolling prairie 
country, which, viewed from a car window, discloses few 
large streams and sources of water-supply in cases of 
drought, and yet presents a view of luxuriant verdure 
and vegetation unsurpassed by the richest valleys of the 
Nile. But it is not from car windows that a country 
can be judged and its productions accurately measured. 
A ride across the rolling prairies discloses the fact that 
Southwestern Iowa is one of the best-watered regions 
in the world. The country is seamed through and through 
with narrow streams, scarcely large enough to be called 
creeks, but which are always supplied with living water. 
If you find a farm-house built on the side of a hill 
or bluff, it is not unusual to find also a living stream of 
clear, cold water gushing out of the hillside, ample for 
family use, and sufficient, when the streams are low, to 
furnish the stock with refreshment. These little streams, 
or ditches, are tributaries of a number of small rivers of 
the region, which are the great arteries of this Iowa 
blue-grass country. Commencing on the east, the Chari¬ 
ton River waters a large scope of country, as rich and 
productive as can be found anywhere. A few miles west 


48 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


flows Grand River, a beautiful stream, which pursues 
a serpentine course through the centre of the region. 
West of the Grand River a few miles is the Platte, a small 
but vigorous stream. Further west a few miles and the 
famous Nodaway moves southwest into Northern Missouri. 
West of the Nodaway is the Nishnabatona River, probably 
the largest and most important stream in the region except 
the Missouri, which is the western boundary. 

A glance at the map will show that these streams all 
tend southward, are only a few miles apart, and afford 
a natural system of irrigation which is not surpassed by 
any territory of similar size in the country. If these 
upland prairies are so productive in seasons of drought, 
it is apparent that the valleys along these small rivers 
are remarkably so. The eastern portion of the region is 
more distinctively a grass and stock country, while the 
western portion is one of the most famous corn and fruit 
sections of the West. These distinctions will be noticed 
by every observant traveller, who will easily know the 
reason to be that there is more of valley than upland 
west of the Nodaway River. 

In the production of corn and hogs Iowa is the leading 
State of the Union, and the State statistics will show that 
the southwest portion of the State contributes a liberal 
share to this remarkable showing. In the valleys watered 
by the Nodaway and Nishnabatona rivers is one of the 
richest corn regions of the world. It follows that South¬ 
western Iowa is a great beef and dairy country. Here the 
Jerseys and Holsteins have become naturalized, with all 
the vigor and virtues of their ancestors across the sea, and 
certainly faring better on a more generous soil and richer 
diet. The cheese and dairy products of Southwestern 


SOME FACTS ABOUT IOWA. 


49 


Iowa are already famous in the markets of the world, and 
its beef and mutton are always in active demand, 
i One of the former great drawbacks of the region was 
the lack of fuel. Along the rivers there was always wood 
enough for the farming communities, but as the towns 
began to grow in size and importance the fuel supply was 
; a problem. Soft coal had to be shipped from the East at 
a heavy freight expense, and occasionally a coal famine 
was the result. Happily, coal was discovered to exist in 
large quantities along the various railway lines, and now 
I the supply is abundant. All along the line of the Burling- 
! ton road in Iowa, from Lucas County east to Burlington, 
there are large mines of excellent coal, but in Southwestern 
Iowa alone nearly every county seems to be underlaid with 
coal beds. The report of the Iowa State Mine Inspector 
for 1887 shows that in that year there were iii mines 
opened, the output being 720,040 tons. Of these mines 
only a very few are systematically worked, and it is 
confidently predicted that in a few years the supply of 
coal in Southwestern Iowa will largely exceed the home 
demand. 

No agricultural and stock country, however fertile and 
productive, can make material progress if remote from 
markets. Southwestern Iowa has enjoyed remarkable 
advantages in this respect ever since the Burlington road 
was built through the State. The builders of this great 
commercial highway laid their track from Chicago to Den¬ 
ver, through the richest agricultural fields of the world, no 
portion of which territory is more productive than the 
blue-grass region of Southwestern Iowa, through the centre 
of which the main line runs in almost a bee-line from east 
to west. Shooting out in every direction from the main 



50 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


line, the Burlington has built branches which penetrate 
every productive locality of the region north and south. 
The total railroad mileage of Southwestern Iowa approxi¬ 
mates nine hundred miles, of which the Burlington oper¬ 
ates more than seven-eighths. 

Until quite recently Chicago has been almost the ex¬ 
clusive market of the products of this region, and this 
great city is now less than twenty-four hours’ ride from 
the centre of Southwestern Iowa by the Burlington fast 
trains. The marvellous development of the packing in¬ 
dustries of Omaha and Kansas City, however, has created 
new and more accessible markets for the products of 
the region, especially the pork product, and it is only 
the question of a few years when these young cities 
will also afford the most desirable markets for the beef 
and mutton of the Iowa blue-grass region. ' 

The wonderful development of Kansas City, St. Joseph, 
Omaha, and Council Bluffs has sapped the vitality of 
every small city or town in Southwest Iowa. Many of 
their best mechanics have been drawn to these larger | 
fields of work by the extraordinary demand for skilled 1 
labor; and, finding steadier employment at better wages, ; 
have removed with their families to these cities. But ' 
these losses to the towns have been more than compen¬ 
sated by the permanent markets they have created for ' 
the live-stock, farm produce, and fruit of the region. 

Nowhere do grapes and small fruit grow more luxuri¬ 
antly than in Southwestern Iowa, and the flavor of the 
fruit is as pungent and rich as any grown in the world. 
The development of Omaha and Council Bluffs alone has 
created a market for all of the surplus fruit product of 
Mills and Pottawattamie counties, and within the past few 



SOME FACTS ABOUT IOWA. 


5 


years more fruit farms have been established in the for¬ 
mer county than in all the preceding years of its history. 
The beautiful Missouri valley is destined to become famous 
as a fruit region. 

The winters of Southwestern Iowa generally average 
with those of the Middle States, growing less severe every 
year because of the steady increase of tree-planting. The 
farm-house on the prairie, without its grove on the north 
and west, is one of the bleakest spots on earth in mid¬ 
winter. But with every year the value of the wind-break 
increases, and the thrifty farmer not only protects his 
residence, but his orchard and barn and cattle-yards, by 
groves of catalpa, box elder, and maple. Arbor Day in 
April is a great event in every school district in Iowa, and 
the landscape is becoming more beautiful every year be¬ 
cause of this annual tree-planting festival. 

But if the Southwestern Iowa winter, from the middle 
of November to the first of April, is uncomfortable, there 
is always a cheerful certainty of a perfect summer and 
autumn, and an occasional early spring. In midsummer, 
when in the Middle States, especially in the Mississippi 
valley, the days are torrid and the nights are sultry and 
oppressive, the air on the rolling prairies of Iowa is as cool 
and refreshing as on mountain heights. In midday the 
sun may shine fiercely, but its rays are tempered by the 
gentle breezes, which seem never to rest from their whole¬ 
some ministrations for a moment. At night the air is 
cool and refreshing, and the sleeper needs a blanket. No 
mosquitoes or other insect pests annoy the dwellers on 
these upland prairies. 

Everywhere in the country are school-houses. The 
horizon is broken by frequent church spires. The towns 


52 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


and cities have high schools and academies, and occasion¬ 
ally a college or great Chautauqua University. These 
indicate that the people of Southwestern Iowa are build¬ 
ing on sure foundations. 


THE SIGNAL STATION ON PIKE’S PEAK.i 

The exact latitude of the Peak is 38 degrees 48 minutes 
north, and longitude 104 degrees 59 minutes west of Green¬ 
wich, as determined by Lieutenant Brown. His scientific 
instruments for ascertaining the velocity of the wind, 
humidity of the air, rainfall, cold and heat, and other 
matters considered worthy of daily reports were shown 
and explained, and we listened to an exceedingly interest¬ 
ing lecture, illustrated by charts and diagrams, explanatory 
of the theory of storms and probabilities, a synopsis of 
which is read in the daily papers by thousands who never 
give a thought to the wonderful agencies of science by 
which they are evolved. This service was commenced in 
1868. Then “Old Probabilities” was in his infancy, and 
for lack of a thorough education committed many blunders. 
Possibilities would have been a better title for him, but 
now probabilities amount almost to certainties, and soon 
will become absolute truths. Every village newspaper 
chronicles a prophecy of invaluable worth to the farmer 
and to all the millions who daily look to these records for 
calculations of business or pleasure, and what a debt of 
gratitude the seamen on our coasts and lakes owe to the 
storm signals of this faithful monitor! 

1 The Round Trip. . ^ John Codman. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 
1881. 



Pike’s Peak in tne Distance. 


< . • 






























































































































V ^ 

d i 





THE SIGNAL STATION ON PIKE’s PEAK. 


53 


The highest temperature on the mountains last year 
was reached in June, when the mercury stood at 57 
degrees above, and the lowest was in February, when it 
marked 37 degrees below zero. Cold, however, depends 
more upon the wind than upon the thermometer. Late in 
the evening of our visit the glass stood at 22 degrees; but 
as the air was . calm we were not uncomfortable out of 
doors without overcoats, although when the wind is vio¬ 
lent the piercing blast is unendurable. 

Snow is scarcely a respecter of seasons, for on July 4th 
it fell to the depth of fifteen inches, whereas in the win¬ 
ter it is all blown away, excepting the provision caught 
among the rocks, which serves for the only supply of 
water all the year round to the hardy inhabitants of the 
signal station. The velocity of the wind is occasionally 
one hundred miles an hour, and at such times no one 
would envy the signal corps the scanty pay they receive 
for the invaluable service they perform. 

There was no signal corps in the days when it was 
said, “ The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest 
the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and 
whither it goeth.” Now the desert of the west is known 
to be the place of its birth, and science has traced its 
almost invariable course from west to east with a precision 
equal to the knowledge of the ocean tides. 


54 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


GREAT SALT LAKE.i 

We reached the shores of the Great Salt Lake after a 
drive of three hours. Such is the optical illusion caused 
by this rarefied atmosphere that the city of Salt Lake, left 
eighteen miles behind us, seemed to be only four or five 
miles distant, the houses being distinctly visible. The 
formation of the land contributes to this deception, ridges 
of mountains running north and south, and enclosing 
valleys of a width of about twenty-five miles, with no 
intervening elevations. We drove for an hour along the 
southern bank of Salt Lake, fanned by the breath of its 
sea air, and looking over its waste of waters dotted with 
mountain islands. It required but little imagination to 
transport ourselves to the shores of the Atlantic, for ex¬ 
tending, as it does, ninety miles to the north, no land 
could be seen beyond the line of the clearly defined 
horizon. Some years ago a steamboat of three hundred 
tons was built for freight and passenger traffic, in connec¬ 
tion with the Union and Central Pacific roads ; but her 
fair prospects were ruined by the construction of the Utah 
Central, and she now lies at the wharf, her only value 
consisting in her occasional use for pleasure excursions. 

How this great basin of salt water came to be deposited 
in the interior of the continent has been a study for 
geographers and naturalists. The changes taking place 
in its character at the present day are observed with much 
interest. It was first discovered by a party of trappers, 

^ The Round Trip. By John Codman. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 

i88i. 



Hitv from Pocyl^^ 


















































































































































































































































































































































































































































I 


GREAT SALT LAKE. 


55 


long before the religious discovery of Joseph Smith. 
When they had tasted of its waters they supposed it was 
an arm of the sea coming in from the Gulf of California; 
but on their attempt to sail into the Pacific by that route 
they experienced the same disappointment which befell 
the Dutchmen in their exploration of the North River, 
although they might have been led to just conclusions 
from different tests. 

The trappers should have realized that the water was 
too salt, and the Dutchman should have found that the 
water was too fresh, to communicate with the Pacific 
Ocean. 

Salt-making has been a business of great importance 
on the banks of the lake since the occupation of this terri¬ 
tory by the Mormons. The water is so densely saline 
that it is impossible for a body to find the bottom. It is a 
capital place to acquire the art of swimming, with perfect 
safety. In former times three barrels of water left to 
evaporate would produce one barrel of salt; but it has so 
weakened in the last twenty years that four barrels of it 
are now required to obtain that quantity. It has become 
fresh, therefore, in a proportion of somewhat more than 
one per cent yearly. Hence it follows that in less than 
one hundred years the name of Great Salt Lake should be 
changed, for, by that time, it will, like Mormonism, be 
cleared of all its impurities. 

We notice the regular water lines, called benches, 
distinctly defined on all the mountain ranges surrounding 
these valleys, affording unmistakable evidence that in 
former days they enclosed vast inland seas. The deep 
alkaline soil of the bottoms has led to the supposition 
that these seas were of salt water, and that they have 


56 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


been completely evaporated, Salt Lake being the sole 
survivor, and that destined to dwindle to a puddle, and 
then to dry up forever. But the last part of this theory is 
negatived by the evident intention of the lake to assume 
something of its original proportions; while it is becoming 
fresher, it is growing larger. Within the twenty-nine 
years that the country around it has been settled, it has 
encroached along its low banks nearly a mile upon the 
land, and deepened five feet. Several fine farms are now 
permanently under water, and the road on which we 
travelled has been moved far inward to accommodate its 
aggressiveness. At the same time that this change is 
going on atmospheric causes for a part of it are apparent. 
The climate is becoming more mild, although it is still 
excessively dry. But each succeeding season brings a 
greater rainfall. This has doubled in twelve years. 

The lake is fed by the Bear and Weber rivers on the 
north, and the Jordan on the south, besides some small 
rivulets that find their way into it. Every year their 
volumes increase, and contribute to the filling up of the 
great basin into which they pour. Notwithstanding, the 
increase of the lake cannot be thus accounted for, as they 
are still but insignificant streams. It must be true that 
new fresh-water fountains have burst from the bottom. 

CALIFORNIA VERSUS OREGON.i 

The Californian measures everything by the scale of his 
own aspirations. A million of dollars for him is not a 
large fortune. Beets and turnips of Eastern immensity 

1 The Round Trip. By John Codman. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 

i88i. 



Great Salt Lake, — Lake Park Bathing Resort. 


































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































CALIFORNIA VERSUS OREGON. 


57 


are vegetables of a fair size at his agricultural exhibitions, 
farms of ten thousand acres are modest properties, a tree 
equal to a New England forest clamped together is not 
an extraordinary bit of timber, and when he talks of a run 
among the Sierras, or the ascent of Mount Shasta, he is 
merely “going to the hills.” A voyage to Japan or China 
to him is not much in excess of a New Yorker’s idea of 
a visit to Fire Island or Long Branch. As California can 
be compared to no other country, so a Californian can be 
compared to no other man, in his estimates of measures, 
weights, distances, and himself. “You ought, by all 
means,” said my friend, “to make a little excursion to 
Oregon. Everybody goes there now for an outing. It 
is only about twenty-five hundred miles altogether, going 
and returning. The accommodations are excellent, the 
fare good, and the price reasonable. Go ! ” We went. 

We took passage on the George W. Elder of the 
regular line. Coasting along a bold shore for the first two 
days, the Californian characteristics were predominant. 
The grass of the early spring was dry, and the hills, 
cleared of trees, presented a barren appearance. Yet the 
. dry, yellow grass was good food for cattle and sheep, 
while here and there in some shady canon, their owners 
lived in comfortable ranches upon the increase of their 
flocks and herds. Across the Coast Range, and in the 
interval between it and the distant Sierras, the map tells 
us of vast plains chosen by an ever-increasing population 
for pasturage and farms. 

As we drew to the north and passed the Oregon line, 
the dull, dry, barren appearance of the coast gave place 
to verdant grass and thickly studded firs and pines. In 
Oregon Nature does not divide her rain and sunshine in 


58 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


two great halves, as she metes them out in California. 
Here it rains and shines by turns, as smiles and tears 
alternate on those happy faces never distorted by immod¬ 
erate laughter or drawn down by persistent grief. The 
California farmer is contented in one way, and the farmer 
of Oregon is contented in another. The first consoles 
himself for the long winter rains with the fixed assurance 
that he will have an abundant harvest, reaped at his 
leisure, stacked and thrashed in the fields, without fear 
of storm and without need of a barn. Then he counts 
with certainty upon his thirty-five bushels of wheat to 
the acre. But, if the winter be dry, what then ? Why, 
he is happy in calculating that two dry winters never come 
in succession. When short crops and starving cattle stare 
him in the face, however, his philosophy is scarcely equal 
to the emergency. 

On the other hand, the farmer of Oregon counts on a 
smaller crop, but he counts with a greater certainty. 
There are for him no alternating years of abundance and 
drought, no perpetually rainy winters and summers of 
steady sunshine. Providence does not send for him its 
gifts in large parcels or none, but it sifts them more 
equally over his path. He must build barns and sheds 
as he was accustomed to build them in the East, but his 
storehouses will be filled with plenty. In point of pros¬ 
perous agriculture and grazing, inasmuch as certainty is 
preferable to spasmodic luck, the inducements to settle 
in Oregon are superior to those which California offers. 


THE OPENING OF OKLAHOMA. 


59 


THE OPENING OF OKLAHOMA.i 
Part I. 

A CITY established and populated in half a day, in a 
remote region of country, and many miles distant from the 
nearest civilized cqmmunity, is a marvel that could have 
been possible in no age but our own, and in no land except 
the United States. 

The opening of Oklahoma was indeed one of the most 
important events that has occurred in the development of 
the West. It marks an epoch in the settlement of the un¬ 
occupied lands owned by the government of the United 
States. Never before has there been such a general up¬ 
rising of the common people seeking homesteads upon the 
few remaining acres possessed by Uncle Sam. The con¬ 
ditions and circumstances of the settlement of Oklahoma 
were widely different from those of the settlement of any 
other section of the United States. This new territory is 
surrounded by thoroughly settled and well-organized com¬ 
monwealths. 

No’ method can so clearly bring before the public the 
actual facts of this wonderful opening as the narration, by 
one who participated in it, of his experience. 

I had been sojourning during the early part of April for 
a brief period in New York, when the Oklahoma question 
loomed up in the horizon of popular discussion. The 
Springer Bill had been introduced and rejected in the 

iThe Opening of Oklahoma. By Hamilton S. Wicks. Cosmopolitan 
Magazine, for September, 1889. 


6o 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


Forty-ninth Congress, and the proclamation of President 
Harrison had been issued, declaring that 1,887,705 
acres of the richest agricultural lands in the West, situ¬ 
ated in the very centre of the Indian Territory, would 
be thrown open to settlement at twelve o’clock, high noon, 
on April 22d, 1889. 

In common with many others in every part of the land, 
I was seized with the Oklahoma fever. Consigning part 
of my effects to a friend, I packed in a single valise a couple 
of flannel shirts, some maps and charts of the new Eldo¬ 
rado, and I stepped on board the “ Penn. Limited ” one 
bright April morning. By evening I found myself in 
Chicago, nine hundred miles west. A single night’s ride 
on the “ C. B. & Q. Fast Express” conveyed me and my 
dreams to Kansas City, five hundred miles southwest. 
A Pullman car awaited me the same evening on the 
“A. T. & S. F. road,” and when I awakened I found 
Kansas smiling in the green vestments of spring on the 
lovely Easter morning of April 21. Arkansas City was 
reached at 9.10 the same morning, three hundred miles 
still further in the heart of the great southwest. 

Thus far I had taken in the panorama as in bird’s-eye 
view — the splendid farms and barns of Pennsylvania, the 
fine scenery of the Appalachian range, the rich prairies of 
Illinois and Iowa, and the vast plains of Kansas. Now, 
for the first time, I became conscious of the conditions 
among which I must struggle in this enterprise directed 
against a wild and unoccupied territory. From the peace 
and reserve of a mere traveller, I was at once hurled into 
the conflict for personal supremacy with a seething mass 
of “boomers.” A foretaste of what I might expect was 
presented to me at Arkansas City. It was as though I 


THE OPENING OF OKLAHOMA. 6l 

had suddenly been interjected into a confused Fourth-of- 
July celebration, where the procession had resolved itself 
into a mob. 

The streets were thronged. Tents were pitched in 
every open space. There was no place to sleep, and 
around the extemporized eating-places it became a veritable 
“struggle for existence.” The congestion of people was 
greatest about the depot, and especially was this the case 
on the following morning, —the notable twenty-second,— 
when I left the corner of a tent that a good Samaritan had 
offered me. I found five trains were made up on the adja¬ 
cent tracks, and were in readiness to start southward into 
the Indian Territory. Hundreds and hundreds of people 
from Arkansas City and neighboring towns, and thousands 
from every part of the United States, surged in wildest 
confusion about the depot. Every man was armed like a 
walking arsenal, and many also constituted themselves 
walking commissaries. The absorbing problem that filled 
the minds of the multitude of men just at that time was, 
which of the five trains standing in readiness, with full 
head of steam on, would be the first to start, as every one 
was eager to be on this first train. To my consternation, 
I found every one of the trains already filled, and I was 
unable to secure standing-room even on an outside plat¬ 
form. Finally, I offered the brakeman a few coins, which 
acted like magic in opening a caboose attached to one of 
the trains, where I found comfortable quarters. 

I found that the caboose contained also a number of 
prominent Western men, with whom I became acquainted. 
The conversation was very animated during the entire 
trip, and revealed an extensive familiarity with the history 
of the Indian Territory and with the tribes that occupy it, 


62 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


as well as with its topography, climate, agriculture, and 
general prospects. This information, which I conjectured 
was fully as essential for my equipment as the revolvers 
I had strapped about my waist, may be summarized as 
follows: — 

The Indian Territory is a portion of the grand purchase 
of Jefferson from Napoleon, by which the sovereignty and 
soil of what was then known as Louisiana passed from the 
French government to the United States. Some time 
after this our government inaugurated the system, which 
it has ever since maintained, of setting apart reservations 
for particular Indian tribes. By a succession of treaties 
extending between the years 1817 and 1836, the govern¬ 
ment set apart reservations for those Indians now known 
as the five civilized tribes; viz. the Cherokees, the Chick- 
asaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles. 

These five tribes were all originally Southern Indians, 
and they had parceled out to them in exchange for their 
Southern lands, which the white man wanted, the entire 
lands of Indian Territory. The condition remained practi¬ 
cally unchanged down to the time of the war of the re¬ 
bellion, during which conflict all the tribes espoused the 
Southern cause. At the close of the war the Choctaws, 
Chickasaws, Creeks, and Seminoles were coerced into a 
sale of 14,000,000 acres of their lands at prices ranging 
from fifteen to thirty cents per acre; and the Cherokees 
entered into a treaty by which they jeopardized their 
hitherto indefeasible right to 8,114,773 acres of their lands, 
6,000,000 of which are known as the Cherokee Strip or 
“ Outlet.” The famous Springer Bill contemplated throw¬ 
ing all these unoccupied lands open for settlement, em¬ 
bracing them and some other small parcels of unoccupied 


THE OPENING OF OKLAHOMA. 


63 


Indian lands in a territory which was to be designated and 
organized as the Territory of Oklahoma. To-day, what is 
known as “ Oklahoma proper,” thrown open for settlement 
by presidential proclamation on April 22d, consists of 
1,392,611 acres ceded by the Creeks, and 495,094 acres 
ceded by the Seminoles by the treaty of 1866. It lies be¬ 
tween the Cherokee Strip on the north and the Chickasaw 
reservation on the south, and between the ninety-seventh 
and ninety-eighth degrees of longitude. 

The lands of the Indian Territory, which are so much 
coveted by settlers, have a general slope from the north¬ 
west to the southeast. The centre of the Territory, known 
as Oklahoma proper, and three-fourths of all the rest of 
these lands are rich and valuable for agricultural purposes. 
The Cherokee Strip, situated west of the Arkansas River 
and south of the Kansas border line, is about fifty miles in 
width, and comprises six million acres of fine rolling 
prairie, the greater part of which is suitable for tillage. 

As was reasonable to suppose, and it so turns out, these 
lands resemble those of the States north and south of them, 
except that they are far more abundantly watered. It 
will very much surprise many who have never visited the 
Indian Territory, and who have conceived it as a “ barren 
waste,” to know that this territory has a larger water sur¬ 
face than Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, or Georgia, and is 
about equal to Missouri in this particular, although the 
State of Missouri is traversed from end to end by the 
waters of its famous namesake. 

The climate of the Indian Territory is very equable and 
healthful. It is located in about the same latitude as 
Northern Georgia, and possesses many of the attributes 
that have rendered Georgia so popular among the inhabi- 


64 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


tants of the contiguous States. The location is especially 
happy for the development of a vigorous industrial popula¬ 
tion. Both the climate and soil unite in their adaptability 
for the production of corn and cotton, and of fruits and 
berries of every description, as is evidenced by the produc¬ 
tions of the various Indian reservations that have been 
brought under cultivation. 


Part II. 

As our train slowly moved through the Cherokee Strip, 
a vast procession of “ boomers ” was seen moving across 
the plains to the Oklahoma lines, forming picturesque 
groups on the otherwise unbroken landscape. The wagon 
road through the “strip,” extemporized by the boomers, 
ran for long distances parallel with the railway, and the 
procession which extended the whole distance illustrated 
the characteristics of Western American life. Here, for 
instance, would be a party consisting of a “prairie 
schooner,” drawn by four scrawny, rawboned horses, and 
filled with a tatterdemalion group, consisting of a shaggy- 
bearded man, a slatternly looking woman, and several 
girls and boys, faithful images of their parents, in shabby 
attire, usually with a dog and a coop of chickens. In 
striking contrast to this frontier picture, perhaps a couple 
of flashy real-estate men from Wichita would come jogging 
on a short distance behind, driving a spanking span of 
bays, with an equipage looking for all the world as though 
it had just come from a fashionable livery stable. Our 
train, whirling rapidly over the prairie, overtook many such 
contrasted pictures. There were single rigs and double 
rigs innumerable ; there were six-mule teams and four-in- 




THE OPENING OF OKLAHOMA. 


65 


hands, with here and there parties on horseback, and not 
a few on foot, trudging along the wayside. The whole 
procession marched, rode, or drove, as on some gala occa¬ 
sion, with smiling faces and waving hands. Every one 
imagined that Eldorado was just ahead, and I dare say the 
possibility of failure or disappointment did not enter into 
the consideration of a single individual on that cool and 
delightful April day. For many, alas, the anticipations 
were 

“April hopes, the fools of chance.” 

I remember throwing my blankets out of the car win¬ 
dow the instant the train stopped at the station. I remem¬ 
ber tumbling after them through the selfsame window. 
Then I joined the wild scramble for a town lot up the 
sloping hillside at a pace discounting any “go-as-you- 
please ” race. There were several thousand people con¬ 
verging on the same plot of ground, each eager for a town 
lot which was to be acquired without cost or without price, 
each solely dependent on his own efforts, and animated by 
a spirit of fair play and good humor. 

The race was not over when you reached the particular 
lot you were content to select for your possession. The 
contest still was who should drive their, stakes first, who 
would erect their little tents soonest, and then, who would 
quickest build a little wooden shanty. 

The situation was so peculiar that it is difficult to con¬ 
vey correct impressions of the situation. One did not 
know how far to go before stopping ; it was hard to tell 
when it was best to stop, and it was a puzzle whether to 
turn to the right hand or the left. Every one appeared 
dazed, and all for the most part acted like a flock of stray 

F 


66 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


sheep. Where the boldest led, many others followed. I 
found myself, without exactly knowing how, about midway 
between the government building and depot. It occurred 
to me that a street would probably run past the depot. I 
accosted a man who looked like a deputy, with a piece of 
white cord in his hands, and asked him if this was to be a 
street along here. 

“ Yes,” he replied. “We are laying off four corner lots 
right here for a lumber yard.” 

“ Is this the corner where I stand ? ” I inquired. 

“Yes,” he responded, approaching me. 

“Then I claim this corner lot!” I said with decision, 
as I jammed my location stick in the ground and ham¬ 
mered it securely home with my heel. “ I propose to 
have one lot at all hazards on this town site, and you will 
have to limit yourself to three, in this location at least.” 

An angry altercation ensued, but I stoutly maintained 
my position and my rights. I proceeded at once to unstrap 
a small folding cot I brought with me, and by standing 
it on its end it made a tolerable centre-pole for a tent. I 
then threw a couple of my blankets over the cot, and 
staked them securely into the ground on either side. 
Thus I had a claim that was unjumpable because of sub¬ 
stantial improvements, and I felt safe and breathed more 
freely until my brother arrived on the third train, with 
our tent and equipments. Not long after his arrival, an 
enterprising individual came driving by with a plough, and 
we hired him for a dollar to plough around the lot I had 
stepped off, twenty-five feet in front and one hundred and 
forty feet in depth. Before dusk we had a large wall tent 
erected on our newly acquired premises, with a couple of 
cots inside, and a liberal amount of blankets for bedding. 


THE OPENING OF OKLAHOMA. 


67 


Now we felt doubly secure in our possession, and as 
night approached I strolled up on the eminence near the 
land office, and surveyed the wonderful cyclorama spread 
out before me on all sides. Ten thousand people had 
“squatted” upon a square mile of virgin prairie that first 
afternoon, and as the myriad of white tents suddenly 
appeared upon the face of the country, it was as though 
a vast flock of huge white-winged birds had just settled 
down upon the hillsides and in the valleys. Here, in¬ 
deed, was a city laid out and popidated in half a day. 
Thousands of camp-fires sparkled upon the dark bosom 
of the prairie as far as the eye could reach, and there 
arose from this huge camp a subdued hum declaring that 
this multitude of brave and self-reliant men had come to 
stay and work, and build in that distant Western wilder¬ 
ness a city that should forever be a trophy to American 
enterprise and daring. 

On the morning of April 23d, a city of ten thousand 
people, five hundred houses, and innumerable tents existed 
where twelve hours before was nothing but a broad 
expanse of prairie. The new city changed its appearance 
every twenty-four hours, as day by day the work of con¬ 
struction went on. The tents were rapidly superseded 
by small frame structures, until at the end of a month 
there were scarcely any tents to be seen. The small 
frame structures in turn gave place to larger ones, and 
a number of fine two-story frame buildings were erected 
on the principal thoroughfares before the end of the first 
sixty day5. The cost of these two-story frame buildings 
ranged from seven hundred to two thousand dollars, where 
lumber was purchased at thirty dollars per thousand, and 
carpenters charged three dollars a day. 


68 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


As soon as it became apparent to capitalists that this 
enterprise was in reality the beginning of a great city, prep¬ 
arations were made for the erection of a number of brick 
blocks ; and at the time of writing this article — less than 
one hundred days from the date of the opening—Guthrie 
presents the appearance of a model Western city, with 
broad and regular streets and alleys; with handsome store 
and office buildings ; with a system of parks and boulevards, 
unsurpassed in point of number, extent, and beauty by any 
city of twice its size and population in the West ; with a 
number of fine iron bridges spanning the Cottonwood 
River, which runs through its midst; with a system of 
waterworks that furnishes hydrants at the corners of all 
the principal streets, and keeps several large sprinkling- 
carts continually busy ; with an electric-light plant on the 
Westinghouse system of alternating currents, capable not 
only of thoroughly lighting the whole city, but of furnish¬ 
ing the power for running an electric railway, for which 
the charter has already been granted by the city council, 
and a large sum of money put up as a forfeiture by the 
company that accepted it. 

Think of a city a hundred days old with all these im¬ 
provements ; and yet the statement of these only gives a 
partial idea of the wonderful thrift that has pushed ahead 
the development of this “magic city.” The population 
now exceeds fifteen thousand souls,^ thirteen thousand of 
whom are men, one thousand five hundred women, and 
five hundred children. As soon as the other eleven thou¬ 
sand men bring their families from the East, it will be¬ 
come apparent to the most superficial statistician that the 
population of Guthrie will not fall far short of twenty-five 

^ By census of 1890, 2788. 




THE OPENING OF OKLAHOMA. 


69 


thousand. The number of houses now erected and in the 
course of construction will not fall short of four thousand, 
while there are still five or six hundred tents scattered 
through the suburbs. 

The city can boast of five banks, one of which, the Com¬ 
mercial Bank, occupies a brick and stone structure that 
cost over twenty thousand dollars. There are fifteen 
hotels, and ninety-seven restaurants and boarding-houses, 
which might be termed life-preserving institutions, and 
only four gun-stores, with their death-dealing commodities. 
There are twenty-three laundries, three music-houses, and 
two churches. There are forty-seven lumber-yards, seven¬ 
teen hardware stores, and four brickyards. There are 
thirteen bakeries, forty dry-goods stores, twenty-seven drug 
stores, and fifty grocery stores. There are six printing- 
offices and six news-stands, and there are three daily news¬ 
papers which show a large subscription list, an exception¬ 
ally fine advertising patronage, and an unusual amount of 
Western enterprise. Every other kind of business is well 
represented. Notwithstanding the prevalence of gambling, 
the exclusion of liquor from the Territory, by a fortunate 
decision of the War Department, has obviated much 
turmoil, strife, and bloodshed. 

The experience of the settlement and organization of 
Oklahoma City, Lisbon, Edwards, Reno City, Alfred, and 
a dozen other towns, is after the same pattern as Guthrie 
exactly; and if I have been able to convey any notion of 
what occurred at Guthrie, it can readily be inferred what 
was transpiring all over the Territory. 


70 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


DENVER.I 

The most marvellous growth of modern times is the 
city of Denver, Colorado. In 1858 there were only a few 
tents and huts on the spot where the city now stands. 
Less than fifty people were there through the winter of 
1858-59, drawn thither by the discovery of gold. A 
barren waste was all that met the vision in every direction 
at that time; for it was the “ Great American Desert,” 
which spread out from the Missouri River to the Rocky 
Mountains, — the home of the buffalo and the hunting- 
ground of the Indian. At the banquet of “ Pioneers ” in 
Denver, September 13, 1883, — an association of men who 
settled in Colorado previous to 1861, — Governor Steele, 
who was one of the members, said : — 

“I landed in Denver on the 4th of May, 1859. There 
was nothing but tents and cabins about here. We had 
fought our way against the current that had turned back, 
who told us the country was a barren land; that we would 
starve to death; that Green Russell had not found any¬ 
thing ; and that the reports we had heard were lies. We 
dared not oppose them, nor declare that we intended to 
come on to the end, because they were so determined not 
to allow any one to sacrifice himself, as they called it, that 
they were ready to mob and hang us if we did not yield. 
We had to steal away from them in order to go on.” 

No persons are more amazed over the growth of Denver, 
and, indeed, the whole New West, than the “ Fifty-miners” 

1 Marvels of the New West. By William M. Thayer, Henry Bill Pub¬ 
lishing Company, Norwich, Conn., 1887, 





DENVER. 


71 


(as they have been called), who struck fortunes when they 
struck the junction of Platte River and Cherry Creek. 

What do we see now where these pioneers pitched their 
tents or reared their humble cabins ? The largest, richest, 
and most beautiful city of its age on earth, — a sparkling, 
costly jewel on the bosom of the “desert.” Where less 
than fifty people wintered in 1858-59, seventy-five thou¬ 
sand^ now dwell,—as intelligent, enterprising, and gener¬ 
ous a population as can be found in New England. The 
city is handsomely laid out, with wide avenues lined with 
shade-trees, and beautified with irrigating rivulets; large 
and costly ware-houses and public buildings; street cars; 
the electric light ; waterworks ; elegant churches ; news¬ 
papers, and schools unsurpassed by those of Boston ; tele¬ 
graph, telephone, and railway facilities; in short, everything 
necessary to promote the growth of a marvellous city, 
which may contain, in twenty years, a population of two 
hundred thousand. 

“ Beautiful for situation ” is Denver, though founded on 
a “desert” ; for that “desert” has been made “to blossom 
as the rose.” The Rocky Mountains rise grandly to view 
along the entire western horizon. The vision takes in 
the snow-capped summits for 150 miles. On the north, 
“ Long’s Peak ” lifts its tall form, and to the south, Pike’s 
Peak towers skyward, with the “ snowy range ” between, 
presenting a landscape which challenges brush and pencil. 

Broadway, New York City, does not present more enter¬ 
prise, stability, and rush, than we behold in Larimer Street, 
bating the difference in magnitude. Eastern solidity, tact, 
and forethought seem to be mixed up with Western dash, 
in about equal parts. The result is a bustling, thriving, 

^By census of 1890, 107,000. 


72 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


inspiring scene. It is worthy of note, as proof of marvel¬ 
lous progress, that twenty-seven years ago, where Larimer 
Street crosses Cherry Creek, two flattened pine logs with 
a rough board railing, formed a foot-bridge from bank to 
bank; and at this point, a flour barrel sunk supplied the 
inhabitants with water. This slight convenience for sup¬ 
plying water, contrasted with the present waterworks in 
the city and 150 artesian wells, exhibits a change almost 
incredible. 

The State House of Colorado, situated on Capitol Hill, 
Denver, will be one of the finest structures of the kind in 
the United States when it is completed. It will cost 
$1,000,000. The building is 295 feet long, exclusive of 
portico or steps; its depth at the centre is 192 feet, and 
its height is 326 feet, nearly the height of Bunker Hill 
Monument. It is surmounted by a statue of Colorado. 
The statute under which the splendid edifice is reared 
allows the builder four years in which to do his work, or 
until January i, 1890. One thousand car-loads of cut stone, 
11,000,000 brick, and 4,000,000 pounds of iron will be 
wrought into the structure. The roof will be covered with 
half-inch slate fastened by brass screws, and bedded in 
concrete. Every window will be of plate-glass, and the 
interior will be finished in hard wood. Standing as it does 
upon an eminence that overlooks the city, its effect upon 
the traveller approaching the metropolis is inspiring. It 
is a crown of glory to Denver ; and it will proclaim to 
future generations of Coloradoians the noble aim and 
enterprise of the present. 

The schools of Denver, and, indeed, of Colorado, excel 
those of Boston and Massachusetts in some particulars. 
Nor would the author limit this remark to Colorado. No 






Cowboy 















































































































































COWBOY LIFE. 


73 


better public and private schools are found in the East than 
are found in all the older portions of the New West. 
Adopting the best elements of the Eastern school system, 
tested for years, and adding thereto the latest and best 
improvements -suggested by leading American educators, 
the friends of education in the New West may well chal¬ 
lenge the criticisms of New England. But the schools of 
Denver are exceptionally excellent, and its school buildings 
are more complete than even those of Boston. 


COWBOY LIFE.i 

The workings of the law of evolution are plainly dis¬ 
cernible in the development of the “ cowboy,” a certain 
prominent and now well-defined character of the Far West 
— one that was made necessary by, and has grown out of, 
the vast cattle interests which have, in the past two or 
three decades, spread over that mystic region. His 
counterpart is scarcely to be found anywhere else in the 
civilized world, for the very good reason that such a spe¬ 
cies of manhood is not required anywhere else. True, 
cattle-raising is carried on extensively in many States of 
our Union, and in various other countries, but nowhere 
under the same conditions and on the same plan as in the 
West; though herders, drovers, and the like are employed 
elsewhere, there is no locality in which a class of men en¬ 
dowed with such characteristics and requiring such peculiar 
tastes and faculties are to be found as are combined in the 
cowboy of our Western plains. The life he leads and the 

iCruisings in the Cascades. By G. O. Shields. Rand, McNally and 
Company, New York, 1889. 


74 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


services he is required to perform call into the business 
young men possessing tastes and traits different from 
those of average human nature, and such as are not found 
in one following any other vocation, as a class. It is an 
occupation that banishes one from society, and in many 
cases from civilization. It is one in which home comforts 
must be dispensed with; it is one requiring its devotees 
to live on plain food, in log huts, and to sleep in blankets 
at best; it is one in which there is often intense hard¬ 
ship and suffering, and which exposes its disciples to 
dangers of various kinds. 

When all these facts and peculiarities of the calling are 
considered, we must readily perceive that men of ordinary 
tastes and inclinations would not seek to engage in it. 
Cowboys are not “native and to the manor born.” They 
do not follow in the footsteps of their fathers as do young 
men on Eastern farms. The business is yet too young in 
our Western territories to have brought about this state of 
affairs, though it will come to exist in future. But at present 
cowboys are all exotics, transplanted from Eastern soil. 

Let us consider, then, what manner of boy or young 
man would adopt such a calling. Certainly not he who 
considers a well-spread table, a cosy, cheerful room, a good, 
soft bed, and neat, tasty clothing essential to his health 
and happiness ; nor he who is unwilling to sever his con¬ 
nection with the social circle or the family group; nor he 
who must have his daily paper, his comfortable office chair 
and desk, his telegraph and other commercial facilities and 
comforts ; nor yet he who, when he travels, must needs 
ride in a comfortable carriage on the highway, or a Pull¬ 
man coach on the railway. But the young man who is 
willing to engage in the occupation of “rustling cattle” 





Roping and Throwing a Steer. 













































































































































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COWBOY LIFE. 


75 


on the plains, who is willing to assume the title of “cow¬ 
boy,” must be he who, although he may love all these 
luxuries, and may, perhaps, have been accustomed to 
enjoy them, has in his nature enough of romance, enough 
love for outdoor life, enough love of sport, excitement, 
and adventure, enough enthusiasm for the wild freedom 
of the frontier, to be willing to deny himself all these 
luxuries, and to allow such pleasures as the ranch and 
the range can afford to compensate for them. 

The love of money cannot enter largely into the con¬ 
sideration of the question, for while the work is often of 
the hardest kind a man can endure and the hours of labor 
only limited by the man’s power of endurance, the wages 
usually paid are low. From $25 to ;^35 a month is the 
average rate of wages for all good men on the range except 
the foreman, who commands from $60 to ^75 a month, 
according to his ability, the number of men he is to have 
charge of, and the responsibility of his position generally. 

As a class, they have been shamefully maligned. That 
there are bad, vicious characters amongst them cannot be 
denied, but that many of the murders, thefts, arsons, and 
other depredations which are committed in the frontier 
towns and charged to cowboys are really committed by 
Indians, bummers, superannuated buffalo hunters, and 
other hangers-on, who never do an honest day’s work of 
any kind, but who eke out a miserable, half-starved exist¬ 
ence by gambling, stealing, poisoning wolves, etc., is a 
fact well known to every close student of frontier life. 
And yet, crimes and misdemeanors are occasionally com¬ 
mitted by men who are, for the time being at least, regu¬ 
larly employed in riding the range. Fugitives from justice, 
thieves, cut-throats, and hoodlums of all classes from the 


76 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


large cities have drifted West, and have sought employ¬ 
ment on the ranges because nothing better or more con¬ 
genial offered; but such are seldom employed, and if 
employed at all, are generally discharged as .soon as their 
true character is learned and their places can be filled by 
worthier men. 


MOUNTAIN-CLIMBING.i 

For any one who has the courage, the hardihood, and 
the physical strength to endure the exercise, there is no 
form of recreation or amusement known to mankind that 
can yield such grand results as mountain-climbing. I 
mean from a mental as well as from a physical standpoint; 
and, in fact, it is the mind that receives the greater benefit. 
The exertion of the muscular forces in climbing a high 
mountain is necessarily severe; in fact, it is more than 
most persons unused to it can readily endure ; and were it 
not for the inspiration which the mind derives from the 
experience when the ascent is made it would be better that 
the subject should essay some milder form of exercise. 
But if one’s strength be sufficient to endure the labor of 
ascending a grand mountain peak, that extends to or above 
timber line, to the regions of perpetual snow and ice, or 
even to a height that gives a general view of the surround¬ 
ing country, the compensation must be ample if one have 
an eye for the beauties of nature, or any appreciation of 
the grandeur of the Creator’s greatest works. 

Let a man stand, for instance, on the summit of Mount 

1 Cruisings in the Cascades. By G. O. Shields. Rand, McNally and 
Company, Chicago, 1889. 


MOUNTAIN-CLIMBING. 


77 


Hood, Mount Tacoma, or Mount Baker, thousands of feet 
above all surrounding peaks, hills, and valleys, where he 
may gaze into space hundreds of miles in every direction, 
with naught to obstruct his view, face to face with his 
Creator, and if he have aught of the love of nature in his 
soul, or of appreciation of the sublime in his mental com¬ 
position, he will be moved to exclaim with the Psalmist, 
“ What is man that Thou art mindful of him, or the son 
of man that Thou visitest him ? ” He will feel his little¬ 
ness, his insignificance, his utter lack of importance, more 
forcibly perhaps than ever before. 

It seems almost incredible that there should be men in 
the world who could care so little for the grandest, the 
sublimest sights their native land affords, as to be unwill¬ 
ing to perform the labor necessary to see them to the best 
possible advantage; and yet it is so, for I have fre¬ 
quently heard them say : “ I should like very much to see 
these grand sights you describe, but I never could afford 
to climb those high mountains for that pleasure; it is too 
hard work for me.” 

And, after all, the benefits to be derived from mountain¬ 
climbing are not wholly of an intellectual character; the 
physical system may be benefited by it as well. It is a 
kind of exercise that in turn brings into use almost every 
muscle in the body, those of the legs being of course 
taxed most severely; but those of the back do their full 
share of the work, while the arms are called into action 
almost constantly, as the climber grasps bushes or rocks 
by which to aid himself in the ascent. The lungs expand 
and contract like bellows, as they inhale and exhale the 
rarefied atmosphere, and the heart beats like a trip-hammer 
as it pumps the invigorated blood through the system. 


78 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


The liver is shaken loose from the ribs to which it has, 
perchance, grown fast, and the stomach is aroused to such 
a state of activity as it has probably not experienced for 
years. Let any man, especially one of sedentary habits, 
climb a mountain five thousand feet high, on a bright, 
pleasant day, when 

Night’s candles are burned out and jocund day 
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.” 

There let him breathe the rare, pure atmosphere, fresh 
from the portals of heaven, and my word for it he will 
have a better appetite, will eat heartier, sleep sounder, and 
awake next morning feeling more refreshed than since the 
days of his boyhood. 

Although the labor be severe it can and should be 
modulated to the strength and capabilities of the person 
undertaking the task. No one should climb faster than 
is compatible with his strength, and halts should be made 
every five or ten minutes, if need be, to allow the system 
ample rest. In this manner a vast amount of work may 
be accomplished in a day, even by one who has had no 
previous experience in climbing. 

The benefits and pleasures of mountain-climbing are 
much better understood and appreciated in Europe than 
in this country. Nearly every city of England, France, 
Spain, Germany, and other European countries has an 
Alpine, Pyrenees, or Himalayan club. The members of 
these clubs spend their summer outings in scaling the 
great peaks of the mountains after which the societies 
are named, or other ranges, and the winter evenings in 
recounting to each other their experiences ; and many 
a man, by his association with the clubs and by indulgence 


SEATTLE. 


79 


in this invigorating pastime, develops from a delicate 
youth into a muscular, sturdy, athletic man in a few 
years. 

The possible value of mountain-climbing as a recreation 
and as a means of gaining knowledge, has been greatly 
enhanced, of late years, by the introduction of the dry- 
plate system in photography; and since the small, light, 
compact cameras have been constructed, which may be 
easily and conveniently carried wherever a man can pack 
his blankets and a day’s supply of food. With one of 
these instruments fine views can be taken of all interest¬ 
ing objects and bits of scenery on the mountain, and of 
the surrounding country. The views are interesting and 
instructive to friends and to the public in general, and 
as souvenirs are invaluable to the owner. From the nega¬ 
tives thus secured lantern slides may be made, and from 
these, by the aid of the calcium light, pictures may be pro¬ 
jected on a screen that can only be excelled in their 
beauty and attractiveness by Nature herself. 


SEATTLE.i 

Seattle is another of those rushing, pushing, thriving 
Western towns, whose energy and dash always surprise 
Eastern people. The population of the city is fifteen thou¬ 
sand souls 2 ; it has gas-works, water-works, and a street 
railway, and does more business and handles more money 
each year than many an Eastern city of fifty thousand or 
more. 

1 Cruisings in the Cascades. By G. O. Shields. Rand, McNally and 
Company, New York, 1889. ^ By census of 1890, 43,000. 


8o 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


The annual lumber shipments alone aggregate over a 
million dollars, from ten saw-mills that cost over four 
millions, and the value of the salmon-canning product is 
nearly a million more. The soil of the valleys adjacent to 
Seattle is peculiarly adapted to hop-raising, and that indus¬ 
try is extensively carried on by a large number of farmers. 
Some of the largest and finest hop ranches in the world 
• are located in the vicinity, and their product is shipped to 
various American and European ports, over one hundred 
thousand tons having been shipped in 1888, bringing the 
growers the handsome sum of ^500,327. 

During the fifteen years since the beginning of this im¬ 
portant cultivation, the hop crop is said never to have 
failed, nor has it been attacked by disease, nor deteriorated 
by reason of the roots being kept on the same land without 
replanting. It is believed that the Dwamish, the White 
River, and the Puyallup Valleys could easily produce as 
many hops as are now raised in the United States, if labor 
could be obtained to pick them. Indians have been mainly 
relied upon to do the picking, and they have flocked to the 
Sound from nearly all parts of the Territory,^ even from 
beyond the mountains. Many have come in canoes from 
regions near the outlet of the Sound, from British Colum¬ 
bia, and even from far-off Alaska, to engage temporarily 
in this occupation ; then to purchase goods and return to 
their wigwams. They excel the whites in their skill as 
pickers, and, as a rule, conduct themselves peaceably. 

Elliot Bay, on which Seattle is built, affords a fine har¬ 
bor and good anchorage, while Lakes Union and Wash¬ 
ington, large bodies of fresh water — the former eleven 
and the latter eighteen feet above tide level — lie just 

^ Now a state. 


SEATTLE. 


8l 


outside the city limits, opposite. There are rich coal 
mines at hand, which produce nearly a million dollars 
worth each year. Large fertile tracts of agricultural lands, 
in the near vicinity, produce grain, vegetables, and fruits 
of many varieties, and in great luxuriance. Iron ore of an 
excellent quality abounds in the hills and mountains back 
of the city, and with all these natural resources and advan¬ 
tages at her command, Seattle is sure to become a great 
metropolis in the near future. 

The climate of the Puget Sound country is temperate ; 
snow seldom falls before Christmas, never to a greater 
depth than a few inches in the valleys and lowlands, and 
seldom lies more than a few days at a time. My friend, 
Mr. W. A. Perry, of Seattle, in a letter dated December 6, 
says : — 

“ The weather, since your departure, has been very 
beautiful. The morning of your arrival was the coldest 
day we have had this autumn. Flowers are now blooming 
in the gardens, and yesterday a friend who lives on Lake 
Washington sent me a box of delicious strawberries, picked 
from the vines in his garden in the open air on December 
4, while you, poor fellows, were shivering, wrapped up in 
numberless coats and furs, in the arctic regions of Chicago. 
Why don’t you emigrate ? There’s lots of room for you 
on the Sumas, where the flowers are ever blooming, where 
the summer never dies, where the good Lord sends the 
tyee (great) salmon to your very door; and where, if you 
want to shoot, you have your choice from the tiny jack- 
snipe to the cultus bear or the lordly elk.” 

G 


82 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


THE SLEEPING-BAG.i 

After supper, I made for myself the usual bed of 
mountain feathers (cedar boughs), on which to spread 
my sleeping-bag. 

This old companion of so many rough jaunts over plains 
and mountains has become as necessary a part of my out¬ 
fit for such voyages as my rifle. Whether it journey by 
day, on the hurricane deck of a mule, in the hatchway of 
a canoe, or on my own shoulder-blades, it always rounds 
up at night to house me against the bleak wind, the driv¬ 
ing snow, or pouring rain. 

By the way, some of my readers may never have seen 
one of these valuable camp appendages, and a description 
of it may interest them. The outer bag is made of heavy, 
brown, waterproof canvas, six feet long, three feet wide in 
the centre, tapered to two feet at the head and sixteen 
inches at the foot. Above the head of the bag proper, 
flaps project a foot farther, with which the occupant’s 
head may be completely covered, if desired. These are 
provided with buttons and button-holes, so that they may 
be buttoned clear across for stormy or very cold weather. 
The bag is left open, from the head down one edge, two 
feet, and a flap is provided to lap over this opening. But¬ 
tons are sewed on the bag, and there are button-holes in 
the flaps so it may be buttoned up tightly. Inside of this 
canvas-bag is another of the same size and shape, less the 
head flaps. This is made of lambskin with the wool on, 

1 Cruisings in the Cascades. By G. O. Shields. Rand, McNally and 
Company, New York, 1889. 


THE SLEEPING-BAG. 


83 


and is lined with ordinary sheeting, to keep the wool from 
coming in direct contact with the person or clothing. One 
or more pairs of blankets may be folded and inserted in 
this, as may be desired. 

If the weather be warm, so that not all this covering is 
needed over the sleeper, he may shift it to suit the weather 
and his taste, crawling in on top of as much of it as he 
may wish, and the less he has over him the more he will 
have under him, and the softer will be his bed. Besides 
being waterproof, the canvas is windproof, and one can 
button himself up in this house, leaving only an air hole 
at the end of his nose, and sleep as soundly and almost as 
comfortably in a snowdrift on the prairie as in a tent or 
house. In short, he may be absolutely at home; and no 
matter what horrid nightmares he may have, he can not 
roll out of bed or kick off the covers. 

Nor will he catch a draught of cold air along the north 
edge of his spine every time he turns over, as he is liable 
to do when sleeping in blankets. Nor will his feet crawl 
out from under the cover and catch chilblains, as they are 
liable to do in the old-fashioned way. In fact, this sleep¬ 
ing-bag is one of the greatest luxuries I ever took into 
camp; and if any brother sportsman who may read this 
wants one and cannot find an architect in his neighbor¬ 
hood capable of building one, let him communicate with 
me and I will tell him where mine was made. 


84 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


INVALIDS’ IDEAS OF CLIMATE.i 

The invalid in search of climate is generally a person 
who, previous to losing health, has never given a thought 
to the subject of climates. He often does not know 
whether the annual rainfall at his home is ten inches or 
fifty, whether it takes one inch or a dozen to make a heavy 
storm, or whether it needs three inches or thirty to raise 
a crop. He has perhaps lived for years in some of the 
severest climates of the East without ever thinking or 
caring about such things. Failing in health from over¬ 
work, over-worry, dissipation, hereditary tendency, care¬ 
lessness, or some other cause with which the climate may 
have little or nothing to do, he thinks of a change only 
when doctor’s prescriptions, patent medicines, nostrums, 
natural healers, and electric belts have failed. Or perhaps 
he is a man of good sense whose physician has early 
advised a change, but who lingers to finish up some busi¬ 
ness or to stay a little longer with his family. Or it may 
be that both he and his physician have little hope, yet 
think the last chance worthy of trial. In any event, he 
comes with rampant hope, his fancy picturing a land of 
dry, warm air, with ever blue skies. 

Of course there will be no cool winds, in fact, no winds 
of any sort but such as are pleasant to his fevered cheek ; 
no damp air, no fogs, no cold nights. The land, however, 
must flow with milk and honey, that he may be well fed 
and have such change of diet as the caprice of his feeble 

1 Southern California. By Theodore S. Van Dyke. Fords, Howard and 
Hulbert, New York, 1886. 


invalids’ ideas of climate. 


85 


appetite demands. Especially must he have cream and 
plenty of milk to drink, with good butter galore, and a due 
variety of meats, — juicy, tender, and nutritious of course. 
At the same time, a full line of fresh vegetables and fruits 
is needed to keep his “liver in order.” Eggs, fresh fish, 
and other “ brain-food ” are also valuable. They “ act upon 
the nervous system” and “restore vitality.” There must 
also be “life” and business, and plenty of society, that 
he may find amusement and not suffer from ennui; 
first-rate hotels, as a matter of course, and something to 
see when he walks or rides. 

Thus laden with notions, and perhaps with the nonsense 
some goose of a friend here has written him about his 
special “ regular little Paradise,” he starts for Southern 
California. He goes to it as to some highly-praised doc¬ 
tor, a specialist whom he makes a long journey to see, 
paying in advance a large fee in the shape of a railroad 
ticket, loss of home comforts, and other privations. Is it 
not natural that he should expect immediate benefits in 
return for such a fee } What right has such a doctor to 
be anything but soft and gentle t What right has he to 
neglect such a patient to attend to the sufferings of a lot 
of farmers and gardeners } He lands in California and— 

“ Gracious heavens !! Who could have thought it } ” 

He looks again to be sure. 

“ Yes ! It is too true. It is rainhig'' 

Now who would believe that that man took the train 
next day for home } Yet, incredible as it may seem, it is 
precisely what hundreds have done. People have actually 
entered San Diego Bay in the morning, intending to spend 
the winter, and left for home the same evening without 
getting off the steamer, simply because it was raining. 


86 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


California gets along with less rain than any other inhab¬ 
itable part of the United States, but it must have some 
every year, and at least once in two years needs as good 
a wetting as every Eastern State generally gets every 
spring. 

The truth is, that false ideas of climate not only spring 
from the invalid’s imagination, but are propagated — often 
with the best intentions — by others. It is probable that 
none of the celebrated climates are near the commonly 
received opinions of them. Rain falls occasionally even 
in “rainless Egypt.” Frost forms in places even on the 
great Sahara and on the Upper Nile; and any one should 
know that from the great snowy mountains that guard the 
Mediterranean on the north cold winds must sometimes 
come. 

“The finest climate in the world.” “Never above 8o°, 
never below 6o°.” How often have we seen these state¬ 
ments— which can be traced back to Humboldt, and are 
free from any suspicion of advertising — about the City of 
Mexico! The elevation alone, 7500 feet above the sea, 
should teach any one better, even if he had never seen 
the great fields of snow on Popocatepetl and his twin 
sister. Official records of the observatory there show 
that the temperature falls below freezing almost every 
month in the winter, and has gone as low as 20° Fahren¬ 
heit, though the days succeeding are warm. Frosty 
mornings with warm days, for a week or two at a time, 
are a matter of course every winter. One of Prescott’s 
annotators criticises him for saying that Cortes landed one 
time in a fog, adding, “ Such a thing as a fog in the valley 
of Mexico is impossible.” Possibly the present writer is 
not a judge of fogs, but he has seen there, for a week or 


THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 8/ 

ten days in succession, hanging over the city until eleven 
or twelve o’clock in the day, something that would pass 
for a fog in New York, and might be mistaken for one 
even in London. The climate of the City of Mexico is 
indeed a fine one, but there can be no part of the world 
where some defects are not found in the climate, and it is 
quite impossible to avoid one fault without encountering 
another. 


THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA.! 

The discovery of gold in the New West, in 1848, came 
about in this way. John A. Sutter, a Swede, drifted to 
this country, and settled in California in 1839. He was 
a very enterprising, industrious, and successful pioneer; 
and, in 1848, he was the owner of a flour-mill, saw-mill, 
tannery, and a large tract of land on which his many 
thousand cattle, horses, and sheep grazed. 

In his employ was one James W. Marshall, in whose 
imagination floated visions of gold. He believed that 
there was a plenty of it in that country waiting to be dis¬ 
covered. He was a mechanic, and built Sutter’s saw-mill, 
which commenced running in January, 1848. On the 
second day of February Marshall shut the water off, when 
he discovered particles of shining dust in the race-way. 
“ Gold ! gold! ” he said within himself under great excite¬ 
ment, and at once instituted an examination, the result 
of which was an ounce of gold picked up in the race-way 
and dug from the crevices of rocks. He was almost 

1 Marvels of the New West. By William M. Thayer. Henry Bill 
Publishing Company, Norwich, Conn., 1887. 


88 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


beside himself with excitement. Mounting a horse, he 
dashed away to report to Captain Sutter, who was at his 
home fort, forty miles distant. It was late in the evening 
when he reached the fort, and rain was descending in 
torrents. 

Leaping from his horse, he said to Captain Sutter, hur¬ 
riedly and excitedly, — 

“Captain, I want to see you alone.” 

Sutter conducted him into a vacant apartment, and 
closed the door. 

“ Are you sure no one will intrude ? Lock the door,” 
continued Marshall, so excited as to awaken Sutter’s sus¬ 
picion that he was crazy. 

Sutter locked the door, and assured his friend that no 
one could hear or see them. 

Stepping up to the table, Marshall poured from a pouch 
his ounce of gold. 

“Gold! gold! That is gold!” he exclaimed, scarcely 
recalling whether he was in the flesh or out. 

“Where did you get that.? ” inquired Sutter. 

Marshall rehearsed the events of the day, and his dis¬ 
covery of gold in the race-way, enjoining profound secrecy 
upon the captain. 

“But you do not know that it is gold,” suggested Sutter. 
“ I have my doubts about it.” 

After some discussion, however. Captain Sutter settled 
the matter by the application of aqua fortis. The test 
showed it to be gold. 

Now Marshall’s excitement reached its climax, and in 
vain did Captain Sutter entreat him to stop over night. 
He must return immediately, and insisted that Sutter 
should accompany him. The latter peremptorily declined 


THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 89 

to go with him in the driving rain, but promised to go in 
the morning. Marshall started back, and Sutter went 
to bed, though not to sleep. 

Early in the morning, the storm having passed away. 
Captain Sutter hurried away to the mill-race. When 
within ten miles of it, he met Marshall on foot. 

“ That you, Marshall.?” exclaimed Sutter. “What are 
you here for.? ” 

“ I was so impatient to see you that I walked this dis¬ 
tance to meet you,” — a reply which showed how great 
was the excitement under which he was laboring. 

On arriving at the mill-race, they found all the men 
engaged in gathering gold. Realizing that the gold-find 
might create so much excitement as to compel the stop¬ 
page of his flour and saw-mills and tannery, as well as all 
labor upon his immense ranch, he called the men together, 
and exacted a promise of secrecy for six weeks, during 
which time they should faithfully attend to their labors 
in the mills, tannery, and on the farm. But such a secret 
could not be kept. In a few days the news was on the 
wings of the wind, and the rush to this Eldorado was with¬ 
out a parallel. Sutter’s men fofsook his mills and ranch 
to search for gold, and all his interests were left to 
neglect and ruin. 

Gold-seekers struck anywhere upon his ranch they 
pleased, and it was almost literally dug up. Without leave 
or license, they appropriated any part of his wide domain to 
their own use. They even stole, killed, and ate his flocks 
and herds ; helped themselves to his large crops of wheat, 
corn, and potatoes ; spoiled his fur trade with the Indians; 
and his hide and leather traffic with the East, and left every¬ 
thing a wreck. Sutter was forced to resort to the law to 


90 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


re-establish his claims, in which litigation he spent his last 
dollar, and finally, after some years of hard struggle with 
poverty, he died. 

Marshall was no more fortunate. He gathered some 
gold, but it slipped out of his hands, so that in the end 
he derived no pecuniary profit from his valuable discovery. 
Hence it has been said, that the discovery of gold on the 
Pacific Slope ruined both the discoverer and the owner 
of the land on which it was found. 


LEADVILLE.i 

The Leadville of to-day is a well-ordered city of twenty 
thousand inhabitants,^ industrious, enterprising, and thrifty. 
The “floating population” has floated away, leaving the 
intelligent and reliable class to control and build up a town 
of grand possibilities. 

The city is located between two lofty ranges of moun¬ 
tains, more than ten thousand feet above the sea-level, and 
therefore above the clouds, and hence called “ the city of 
the clouds.” Its streets are wide, and the chief ones are 
lined with as extensive and well-stocked warehouses as are 
found in Eastern cities. Indeed, few towns of its size in 
New England can boast of as large a music store as we 
saw on its principal street. Its public buildings — espe¬ 
cially its opera-house—would be regarded with pride in 
the best towns of the East. A single fact illustrates the 
magnitude, cheapness, and reliability of Leadville’s market. 

1 Marvels of the New West. By William M. Thayer. Henry Bill 
Publishing Company, Norwich, Conn., 1887. 

Depression in business has reduced the population to 10,384. By census 
of 1880, the population was 14,820. 


LEADVILLE. 


91 


A new citizen desired to purchase a fine gold watch, and 
he wrote a friend in New York City to purchase it for him 
at Tiffany’s. The friend called at the famous store, and 
made known his errand. The manager replied: “ We 

will sell you a watch for your Leadville friend ; but he can 
purchase just as good a watch of Joslin and Park, Lead¬ 
ville, as we can sell you, and get it just as cheap, and save 
heavy express charges.” This fact was communicated to the 
citizen of Leadville, and the watch was bought in that city. 

Leadville has been supposed by the Eastern people 
to be exceedingly mean, morally, — next door to the pit, 
possibly; but we assure the reader that it is really a 
Christian city to-day, because its eight or ten active 
churches give tone and direction to public thought and 
sentiment. Vice is no more prevalent than it is in East¬ 
ern cities, and crime does not make so black a record as it 
does in numerous Eastern towns we might name. In the 
autumn of 1883, the writer walked through its principal 
thoroughfare after nine o’clock in the evening, and wit¬ 
nessed the same order and quiet to which he had been 
accustomed at home. True, the doors of saloons were 
thrown wide open, and they were thronged with miners 
from the suburbs ; but the crowd was orderly and quiet. 

Just before our visit there, a member of the city govern¬ 
ment knocked down a man on the street, with whom he 
had an altercation; and forthwith he was arraigned by his 
associates, who, after due examination, moved to expel him 
from their body, and would have accomplished their pur¬ 
pose, had not legal counsel decided that only the people 
who elected could depose him. But the citizens accepted 
the will for the deed ; and we assured one of them that such 
an honorable regard for the dignity and reputation of the 
city government was not possible in New York or Boston. 


92 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


Leadville schools would be an honor to any city of New 
England. In February, 1878, the first school was opened 
in a rude log house, where thirty boys and girls were 
taught by Mrs. A. R. Undergraff. In eighteen months 
from that time, there were twelve public schools and 
thirteen teachers. One year later, there were twenty-one 
teachers and two thousand pupils. In May, 1881, an 
elegant school building, built of brick and highly orna¬ 
mented with stone trimmings, was completed at an ex¬ 
pense of sixty-two thousand dollars. It is eighty-one feet 
long and seventy-nine wide, two stories high above the 
basement, the latter portion being devoted to play-rooms, 
janitor’s room, and office of the superintendent of the city 
schools. Each story of the building is sixteen feet high, 
the whole heated by four furnaces in the cellar, and sup¬ 
plied with water and gas pipes. 

The erection of this schoolhouse was followed by the 
building of another at a cost of forty-five thousand dollars. 
In the autumn of 1883, we found two additional school- 
houses (making four in all), which cost forty thousand 
dollars each. 

In five and one-half years from the time of opening the 
first school in the log cabin, we found, by personal observa¬ 
tion, a complete system of graded schools, including a 
thoroughly equipped high school, with nearly two thousand 
pupils enrolled in four elegant buildings, with a corps of 
experienced teachers, whose services were obtained only by 
the payment of large salaries. To-day the schools of Lead¬ 
ville lose nothing in comparison with the best schools of the 
land. No teacher is paid less than twenty dollars a week; 
and the best-paid ones receive forty-two dollars a week. 
Most of them came from the East, where they had already 
won a reputation for skilful work in the schoolroom. 


FURS OF THE GREAT FUR LAND. 


93 


FURS OF THE GREAT FUR LAND.i 

We will now give a brief sketch of the various furs sold 
by the Hudson’s Bay Company, and the average number 
of each species annually exported from its territories. 

The first in point of value is the pine marten, or Hud¬ 
son’s Bay sable, of which about 120,000 skins, on an average, 
are exported every year. The martens or sables from this 
region are not considered so valuable furs as the sables of 
Russia, although there is no doubt that the varieties are in 
reality one and the same species ; the difference in tem¬ 
perature, and other local causes, readily accounting for the 
better quality of the Russian fur. The winter fur is the 
most valuable, and the Indian trappers say the first fall of 
rain, after the snow disappears, spoils the marten. When 
caught the animal is skinned like a rabbit, the peltry being 
inverted as it is removed, then drawn over a flat board, 
and dried in the sun. The animals haunt the pine forests, 
especially where fallen or dead timber abounds, and are 
mostly caught in the style of trap known as the dead-fall. 
A good marten skin is worth in trade from two and a half 
to three dollars. The best skins come from the far North, 
being darker and finer furred than others. 

The fisher is much like the pine marten, but larger. Just 
why he is called a fisher we cannot imagine, as he does not 
catch fish, or go near the water except when compelled to 
swim a stream. He climbs readily, but is trapped like the 
marten. The tail is very long and bushy, and at one time a 
large trade was carried on in them, only the tails being 

1 The Great Fur Land. By H. M. Robinson. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 
New York, 1879. 


94 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


worn by the Polish Jew merchants. About twelve thou¬ 
sand are annually exported from the territory. The average 
trade price is from two and a half to three dollars. The 
fisher in full winter coat makes a finer suit of furs than 
the sable. 

The mink is vastly inferior to either fisher or marten in 
the quality of fur, and its habits are entirely different. It 
frequents streams and watercourses, and feeds upon fish, 
crabs, etc. The Indian hunter catches it with a steel trap, 
baited generally with a fish. The trade price is about fifty 
cents a skin. About 250,000 skins are exported, the 
majority of which ultimately go to the continent of Europe. 

The raccoon is widely scattered over the territories of 
the company, about 520,000 skins being purchased and 
exported every year. The raccoons are generally shot, but 
a few are taken in steel traps. The fur is not very valu¬ 
able, being principal!}^ used in making carriage-rugs and in 
lining inferior cloaks and coats. 

The most valuable fur traded by the company is that of 
the black and silver foxes. There are three species of fox 
found in the territory — the black or cross, the silver, and 
the red fox. The two former are considered to be only 
varieties of the latter; as in any large collection of skins 
every intermediate tint of color, changing by regular gra¬ 
dations from the red into the cross and from the cross into 
the silver and black, may be found, rendering it difficult 
even for the trader to decide to which of the varieties a 
skin really belongs. The silver and cross fox skins bring 
from ^40 to $50 each ; the red fox is only worth about five 
or eight shillings. About 50,000 red foxes, 4500 cross 
and 1000 silver, are annually exported. The silver fox fur 
is almost entirely sold to Chinese and Russian dealers. 


FURS OF THE GREAT FUR LAND. 


95 


About 60,000 beaver skins are now brought annually 
from the company’s territories. So much was this fur in 
demand by hatters, before the introduction of silk and 
rabbit’s fur in the napping of hats, that the poor little 
rodent in some districts is entirely exterminated. The 
principal use made of the fur now is in the manufacture of 
bonnets in France, and in making cloaks. The beaver is 
a very difficult animal to trap, but is, nevertheless, rapidly 
disappearing from the great fur preserves of the North. 

The musk-rat is similar in many of its habits to the 
beaver. Indeed, some of the species build their houses 
precisely as the beaver does. The hunters generally spear 
them through the walls and roofs of their dwellings. The 
annual destruction of these little animals, though immense, 
many hundreds of thousands being yearly exported, does 
not serve greatly to diminish their numbers. The fur is 
of very little value, being used in the coarsest manufact¬ 
ures. Large bundles of the tails of the musk-rat are con¬ 
stantly exposed for sale in the bazars of Constantinople as 
articles for perfuming clothing. 

The lynx or wild-cat is found in considerable numbers 
throughout the territory. Its fur, however, though prettily 
marked, is not of much value. Of wolf skins about fifteen 
thousand are annually exported, and of the land otter about 
seventeen thousand. The fur of the sea-otter, though the 
most valuable fur traded, is very difficult to obtain. It is 
generally caught in nets or speared by the Indians in the 
sea. Nearly all the sea-otter fur goes to China, and a good 
skin is worth about ^200. 


96 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


THE DOGS OF HUDSON’S BAY TERRITORY.i 

The traveller who lingers long at any season of the year 
about a Hudson Bay Company’s fort will be struck by the 
unusual number of dogs lying about the square court dur¬ 
ing the day, or howling and fighting underneath his win¬ 
dows at night. To leave his door open at any time is 
only to invite an invasion of the wolfish brutes, who come 
crowding up, and seem inclined to take possession of the 
apartment. During the summer season they do nothing 
for man, but pass their time in war, robbery, and music, if 
their mournful howls can be dignified by that name. And 
yet, neglected as are these noisy, dirty animals in their 
months of idleness, unfed, kept in bare life by plunder, 
the mark for every passer’s stick or stone, they are highly 
prized by their owners, and a team of fine, good, well- 
trained dogs will bring a handsome price when the winter 
season approaches. Then two well-broken dogs become 
as valuable as a horse; then it is the dogs that haul the 
sledges and that perform, in fact, nearly all the work of 
the country. 

These animals are mostly of the ordinary Indian kinds, 
large, long-legged, and wolfish, with sharp muzzles, pricked 
ears, and thick, straight, wiry hair. White is one of the 
most usual colors, but brown, blue-gray, and yellow, and 
white marked with spots of black, or of the other various 
hues, are also common. Some of them are black with 
white paws, others are covered with long rough hair, like 

1 The Great Fur Land. By H. M. Robinson. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 
New York, 1879. 




V / V 


t 



Dogs of Hudson’s Bay. 


. i 


97 





98 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


Russian setters. There are others of a light bluish-gray 
with dark, almost black, spots spread over the whole body. 
Almost all of them have black noses, but with some of the 
lighter colored ones this part is red, brown, or pink, which 
has a very ugly effect. Most of them are very wolfish in 
appearance, many being half or partly, or all but entirely, 
wolves in blood. One frequently sees dark gray dogs 
which are said to be almost pure wolves. Seen upon the 
prairie, it is almost impossible to distinguish them from 
the ordinary wolf of the middle-sized variety; and their 
tempers are spoken of as a match for their looks. Indeed, 
it often happens that the drivers of such dogs are obliged, 
before harnessing or unharnessing them, to stun them 
momentarily by a blow upon the nose, on account of their 
savage natures. Many of the others, moreover, are nearly 
as bad, and need a touch of the same rough treatment. 

It sometimes happens, however, that among this howl¬ 
ing pack of mongrels there may be picked out a genuine 
train of dogs. There is no mistake about them in size or 
form, from foregoer to hindmost hauler. They are of pure 
Esquimaux breed, the bush-tailed, fox-headed, long-furred, 
clean-legged animals, whose ears, sharp-pointed and erect, 
spring from a head embedded in thick tufts of woolly hair. 
These animals have come from the far-northern districts, 
and have brought a round sum to their owners. They are 
of much more equable temper than their wolfish brethren, 
and frequently have a keen appreciation of kindness. To 
haul is as natural to them as to point is to a pointer. But 
it is with dog-driving as with everything else, there are 
dogs and dogs, and the difference between their mental 
and physical characteristics are as great as between those 
of average men. 


THE DOGS OF HUDSON’s BAY TERRITORY. 


99 


Dogs in the Fur Land are harnessed in a number of 
ways. The Esquimaux run their dogs abreast. On the 
coast of Hudson’s Bay they are harnessed by many sepa¬ 
rate lines into a kind of band or pack; while in Manitoba 
and the Saskatchewan they are driven tandem. Four 
dogs to each sledge form a complete train, though three 
and even two are used, and are harnessed to the cariole by 
means of two long traces. Between these traces the dogs 
stand one after the other, with a space intervening between 
them of perhaps a foot. A round collar, passing over the 
head and ears and fitting closely to the shoulder, buckles 
on each side to the traces, which are supported by a back- 
band of leather. This back-band is generally covered with 
tiny bells, the collar being hung with those of larger size, 
and decorated with parti-colored ribbons or fox-tails. 

In no single article of property, perhaps, is greater pride 
taken than in a train of dogs turned out in good style; 
and the undue amount of beads, bells, and ribbons, fre¬ 
quently employed to bedizen the poor brutes, produces the 
most comical effect when placed upon some terror-stricken 
dog, which, when first put into harness, usually looks the 
picture of fear. The ludicrous effect is intensified when 
the victim happens to be young in years, and still retains 
the peculiar expression of puppyhood. 

The rate of speed usually attained in sledge travel is 
about forty miles per day of ten hours, although this rate 
is often nearly doubled. Four miles an hour is a common 
dog-trot when the animals are well loaded ; but this can 
be greatly exceeded when hauling a cariole containing a 
single passenger upon smooth snow-crust or a beaten 
track. 


100 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


ARCTIC COLD.i 

When light showers of snow fall in minute particles, as 
if it were frozen dew, from a sky without a cloud, and the 
sun shining brightly, the winter traveller in the Fur Land 
knows just what degree of cold he may expect. He knows 
that masses of ice, the size of a man’s fist, will form on his 
beard and mustache, from the moisture of his breath 
freezing as it passes through the hair; that his eyelashes 
will have to be kept in rapid motion to prevent them from 
becoming permanently closed ; that his hands can scarcely 
be exposed for a moment; that his bare fingers laid upon a 
gun-barrel will stick to it as if glued, from the instan¬ 
taneous freezing of their moisture ; that the snow will melt 
only close to the fire, which forms a trench for itself, in 
which it sinks slowly to the level of the ground ; that the 
snow, light and powdery, will not melt beneath the warmth 
of his foot, and his moccasins will be as dry upon the 
journey as if he had walked through sawdust ; that a crust 
of ice will form over the tea in his tin cup, as he sits within 
a yard of the roaring fire ; that he will have a ravenous 
appetite for fat, and can swallow great lumps of hard 
grease — unmoulded tallow candles — without bread or 
anything to modify it. So he dresses accordingly — that 
is the white traveller. 

He first puts on three or four flannel shirts, one of 
duffel, and over all a leather one, beaded and fringed to 
suit the taste; his hands are encased in mittains, or large 

1 The Great Fur Land. By H. M. Robinson. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 
New York, 1879. 


ARCTIC COLD. 


lOI 


gloves of moose-skin, made without fingers, and extending 
well up towards the elbows, loose enough to be easily 
doffed upon occasion, and carried slung by a band around 
the neck to prevent being lost ; his feet are swathed in 
duffel, and covered with enormous moccasins; his legs are 
encased in thick duffel leggins, until they resemble a 
severe case of elephantiasis; his ears and neck are pro¬ 
tected by a thick curtain of fur : and yet, with it all, he is 
hardly able to keep warm with the most active exercise. 

With his Indian or half-breed companion it is different. 
Inured to the climate and accustomed to winter travel, he 
is comfortable under a meagre weight of clothing. He 
relies upon vigorous exercise for the development of 
caloric, and is constantly in motion. A pair of corduroy 
trousers, a cotton shirt, a capote, moccasins and a fur cap 
constitute his winter costume. His hands are encased in 
mittains, but in lieu of underclothing he ties his trousers 
tightly about the ankle, and the sleeves of his capote about 
his wrists. This, with the gaudy sash always wrapped 
around his waist, divides his clothing into two air-tight 
compartments, as it were. If it becomes cold in one, he 
always has the other in which to take refuge ; or he can 
loosen his belt, thus turning on a supply of caloric, which 
equalizes the temperature in both compartments. Lightly 
clad, he is in excellent trim for running, and seems warm 
and comfortable, while his more heavily-apparelled com¬ 
panion shakes and shivers on the slightest halt. 

Tents are not used for winter travel, as the huge fires 
necessary for comfort and even safety could not be made 
available. In fact, unless it is desirable to make a long 
halt in any one locality, tents are only an incumbrance to 
the traveller, without adding proportionately to his comfort. 


102 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


Well sheltered by timber, and with an enormous fire blaz¬ 
ing at his feet, sleeping in the open air is generally feasible 
enough. The operation of undressing, however, is re¬ 
versed, and the traveller literally dresses for the night, 
covering head and all, and placing his feet as near the fire 
as he dares. All huddle together as closely as possible, 
and when silence reigns, the dogs creep softly in towards 
the fire and lie at the sleeper’s feet. 

Then begins the cold. The mercury in the thermometer 
placed at the bedside sinks down, down, till it disappears 
in the bulb, and may be used as a bullet. The traveller is 
tired with his forty-mile march on snowshoes. Lying.down 
with blistered feet and stiffened limbs, sleep comes to him 
by the sheer force of fatigue ; but the dim consciousness of 
that frightful cold never for an instant leaves his waking 
brain ; and as he lies in a huddled heap beneath his robes, 
he welcomes the short-haired shivering dog, who, forced 
from his cold lair in the snow, seeks warmth on the out¬ 
side of his master’s blankets. 

Strange as it may appear to those who, living in warm 
houses and sleeping in cosy rooms from which all draughts 
are zealously excluded, deem taking one’s rest in a poplar 
thicket, at such a temperature, next to an impossibility, it 
is quite the reverse. The men who brave such dangers 
are made of sterner stuff, and do not perish so easily. 
On the other hand, it frequently occurs that when, before 
dawn, the fire again glows ruddily, and the cup of tea is 
drunk hot and strong, the whole discomfort of the night is 
forgotten—forgotten, perhaps, in the dread anticipation 
of a cold still more trying in the day’s journey to come. 



103 




Night Camp. 


















































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































104 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


THE GARDEN OF THE WORLD.i 

Cuba has justly been called the garden of the world, 
perpetual summer smiling on its shores, and its natural 
wealth and possibilities baffling even the imagination. 
The waters which surround it, abound with a variety of 
fishes, whose bright colors, emulating the tints of precious 
stones and the prismatic hues of the rainbow, astonish 
and delight the eye of the stranger. Stately and peculiar 
trees enliven the picturesque landscape. Throughout the 
woods and groves flit a variety of birds, whose dazzling 
colors defy the palette of the artist. Here the loquacious 
parrot utters his harsh notes; there the red flamingo 
watches by the shore of the lagoon, the waters dyed by 
the reflection of his scarlet plumage. 

It would require a volume to describe the vegetable and 
animal kingdom of Cuba; but among the most familiar birds 
are the golden robin, the bluebird, the catbird, the Spanish 
woodpecker, the gaudy-plumed paroquet, and the pedovera, 
with its red throat and breast and its pea-green head and 
body. There is also a great variety of wild pigeons, blue,’ 
gray, and white; the English lady-bird, with a blue head, 
scarlet breast, and green and white back ; the indigo-bird, 
the golden-winged woodpecker, the ibis, and many smaller 
species, like the humming-bird. Of this latter family 
there are said to be sixty different varieties, each suf¬ 
ficiently individualized in size and other peculiarities to 
be easily identified by ornithologists. Some of these birds 

1 Due South. By Maturin M. Ballou. Houghton, Mifflin and Com¬ 
pany, Boston, 1885. 


THE GARDEN OF THE WORLD. 


105 


are actually no larger in body than butterflies, and with 
not so large a spread of wing. A humming-bird’s nest, 
composed of cotton interlaced with horse-hair, was shown 
the author at Buena Esperanza, a plantation near Guines. 
It was about twice the size of a lady’s thimble, and con¬ 
tained two eggs, no larger than common peas. The nest 
was a marvel of perfection, the cotton being bound cun¬ 
ningly and securely together by the long horse-hairs, of 
which there were not more than three or four. Human 
fingers could not have done it so deftly. Probably the 
bird that built the nest and laid the eggs did not weigh, 
all fledged, over half an ounce ! 

Parrots settle on the sour orange-trees when the fruit is 
ripe, and fifty may be secured by a net at a time. The 
Creoles stew and eat them as we do pigeons; the flesh is 
tough, and as there are plenty of fine water-fowl and marsh 
birds about the lagoons as easily procured, one is at a loss 
to account for the taste that leads to eating parrots. The 
’ brown pelican is seen in great numbers sailing lazily over 
the water, and dipping for fish. 

Strange is the ubiquity of the crows ; one sees them in 
middle India, China, and Japan. They ravage our New 
England cornfields, and in Ceylon — equatorial Ceylon — 
they absolutely swarm. When one, therefore, finds them 
saucy, noisy, thieving, even in Cuba, it is not surprising 
that the fact should be remarked upon, though here the 
species differs somewhat from those referred to, being 
known as the Jack-crow or turkey-buzzard. In the far 
East, like the vulture, the crow is considered a natural 
scavenger or remover of carrion, and the same excuse is 
made for him in Cuba and Florida. But is he not more 
of a freebooter and feathered bandit, — in short a prowling 


io6 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


thief generally ? Nature has few birds or animals upon 
her varied list with which we would find fault, but the 
crow, — well, having nothing to say in its favor, let us drop 
the subject. 

When these West Indian islands were first settled by 
the Spanish emigrants, they were the home of myriads of 
birds of every tropical variety, but to-day the feathered 
beauties and merry songsters have been entirely driven 
away from some of the smaller islands, and decimated 
on others, by the demand for bird’s wings with which to 
deck ladies’ bonnets in Europe and America. Sportsmen 
have found it profitable to visit the tropics solely for the 
purpose of shooting these rainbow-colored creatures for 
ornaments. Aside from the loss to general interest and 
beauty in Nature caused by this wholesale destruction 
of the feathered tribe, another and quite serious result has 
been the consequence. A plague of vermin has followed 
the withdrawal of these little insect-killers. 

It seems unreasonable that when the generous, fruitful’ 
soil of Cuba is capable of producing two or three crops 
of vegetables annually, the agricultural wealth of the 
island should be so poorly developed. Thousands upon 
thousands of acres of fertile soil are still in their virgin 
condition. It is capable of supporting a population of 
almost any density, — certainly from eight to ten millions 
of people might find goodly homes here, and yet the 
largest estimate at the present time gives only a million 
and a half of inhabitants. When one treads the fertile 
soil and beholds the clustering fruits in such abundance, 
the citron, the star-apple, the perfumed pineapple, the 
luscious banana, and other fruits for which our language 
has no name, not forgetting the various noble woods 


THE GARDEN OF THE WORLD. 


107 


which caused Columbus to exclaim with pleasure, and to 
mention the palm and the pine growing together — char¬ 
acteristic types of Arctic and equatorial vegetation — we 
are struck with the thought of how much Providence and 
how little man has done for this Eden of the Gulf. We 
long to see it peopled by men who can appreciate the gifts 
of Nature, men who are willing to do their part in recog¬ 
nition of her fruitfulness and who will second her spon¬ 
taneous bounty. 

Nowhere on the face of the globe would well-directed, 
intelligent labor meet with a richer reward, nowhere would 
repose from labor be as sweet. The hour of rest here 
sinks upon the face of Nature with a peculiar charm ; the 
night breeze, in never-failing regularity, comes with its 
gentle wing to fan the weary frame, and no danger lurks 
in its breath. It has free scope through the unglazed 
windows, and blowing fresh from the broad surface of the 
Mexican Gulf, it bears a goodly tonic to the system. 

Beautifully blue are the heavens and festally bright the 
stars of a tropical night, where familiar constellations 
greet us with brighter radiance and new ones charm the 
eye with their novelty. Pre-eminent in brilliancy among 
them is the Southern Cross, a galaxy of stars that never 
greets us in the North. At midnight its glittering frame¬ 
work stands erect. That solemn hour past the Cross 
declines. How glorious the nights where such a heavenly 
sentinel indicates the watches ! ‘‘ How often have we 

heard our guides exclaim in the savannas of Venezuela,” 
says Humboldt, “or in the deserts extending from Lima 
to Truxillo, ‘Midnight is passed, the Cros's begins to 
bend.’ ” Cuba is indeed a land of enchantment, where 
Nature is beautiful and bountiful, and where mere exist- 


io8 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


ence is a luxury, but it requires the infusion of a sterner, 
a more self-reliant, self-denying, and enterprising race 
to test its capabilities and to astonish the world with its 
productiveness. 


THE NATIONAL VEHICLE OE CUBA.i 

The volante is the national vehicle of Cuba, and until 
latterly it was the only one in common use upon the 
island. It has been superseded, especially in Havana, just 
as steam launches are crowding out the gondolas on the 
canals of Venice. Our present notes would be quite in¬ 
complete without a description of this unique vehicle. It 
is difficult without experience to form an idea of its extraor¬ 
dinary ease of motion, or its appropriateness to the pecu¬ 
liarities of the country roads, where only it is now in use. 
At first sight, with its shafts sixteen feet long, and wheels 
six yards in circumference, one would think that it must 
be very disagreeable to ride in; but the reverse is the fact, 
and when seated the motion is most agreeable, like being 
rocked in a cloud. It makes nothing of the deep ruts and 
inequalities upon the execrable roads, but sways gently its 
low-hung, chaise-like body, and dashes over and through 
every impediment with the utmost facility. Strange as it 
may seem, it is very light upon the horse, which the pos¬ 
tilion also bestrides. When travelling any distance, a 
second horse is added on the left, abreast of the first, and 
attached to the volante by an added whiffletree and traces. 
When there are two horses the postilion rides the one on 

1 Due South. By Maturin M. Ballou, Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 
Boston, 1885. 


THE NATIONAL VEHICLE OF CUBA. IO9 

the left, thus leaving the shaft-horse free of other weight 
than the vehicle. 

If the roads are very rough, which is their chronic condi¬ 
tion, and there is more than usual weight to carry, a third 
horse is often added, and he is placed abreast with the 
others, to the right of the shaft-horse, being guided by a 
bridle rein in the hands of the calisero, as he is called. 
Heretofore the wealthy people took great pride in these 
volantes, a purely Cuban idea, and they were ornamented 
for city use at great expense with silver trimmings and 
sometimes even in gold. A volante equipped in this style, 
with the gaily-dressed negro postilion, his scarlet jacket 
elaborately trimmed with gold or silver braid, his high 
jack-boots with big silver buckles at the knee, and huge 
spurs upon his heels, was quite a dashing affair, especially 
if a couple of black-eyed Creole ladies constituted the 
freight. 

Were it not for the few railroads and steamboat routes 
which are maintained, communication between the several 
parts of the island would be almost impossible. During 
the rainy season especially, inland travel is impracticable for 
wheels. China or Central Africa is equally well off in this 
respect. Nearly all transportation, except it be on the line 
of the railroads, is accomplished on mule-back, or on the 
little Cuban horses. The fact is, road-making is yet to be 
introduced into the island. Even the wonderful volante 
can only make its w^y in the environs of cities. Most of 
the so-called roads resemble the bed of a mountain tor¬ 
rent, and would hardly pass for a cow-path in America. 
Nothing more clearly shows the undeveloped condition of 
the island than this absence of means for internal commu¬ 
nication. In Havana and its immediate environs the 


I TO 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


omnibus and tramway afford facilities which are liberally 
patronized, though when the latter were first introduced 
it was considered such an innovation that it was most bit¬ 
terly opposed by the citizens. Like the railroads, the 
tramway was the result of foreign enterprise, and has 
doubled the value of property in any direction within a 
couple of leagues of the city proper. 

One of the most petty and most annoying experiences 
to which the traveller is subjected is the arbitrary tax of 
time and money put upon him by the small officials, of 
every rank, in the employment of the government. By 
this system of small taxes upon travellers, a considerable 
revenue is realized. Where this is known, it keeps visitors 
away from Cuba, which is just what the Spaniards pretend 
to desire, though it was found that the Creoles did not 
endorse any such idea. Americans leave half a million 
dollars and more annually in Havana alone, an estimate 
made for us by competent authority. 

Passports are imperatively necessary upon landing, and 
if the visitor desires to travel outside of the port at which he 
arrives, a fresh permit is necessary, for which a fee is 
charged. In vain do you show your passport, endorsed by 
the Spanish consul at the port from which you embarked in 
America. The official shrugs his shoulders, and says it is the 
law. Besides, you are watched and your movements re¬ 
corded at police headquarters ; though in this respect Berlin 
is quite as uncomfortable for strangers as is the city of 
Havana. Despots must hedge themselves about in every 
conceivable way. Be careful about the contents of your 
letters sent from or received in Cuba. These are some¬ 
times delivered to their address, and sometimes they are 
not. Your correspondence may be considered of interest 


THE AMERICAN RAILROAD SYSTEM IN MEXICO. Ill 


to other parties as well as to yourself, in which case an 
indefinite delay may occur in the receipt thereof. 


THE AMERICAN RAILROAD SYSTEM IN 
MEXICO.i 

The commercial relations of the United States with 
Mexico are, to all intents and purposes, comprised in and 
identical with the system of railroads which American 
capital and enterprise have introduced into the latter 
country. Their introduction has constituted the last and 
the greatest revolution that Mexico has experienced since 
the achievement of her independence ; for, with the means 
which they have for the first time afforded the central gov¬ 
ernment for quick and ready communication between the 
remote portions of the republic, a stable government and a 
discontinuance of internal revolts and disturbances have, for 
the first time, become possible. Thus, to illustrate : Chihua¬ 
hua, an important centre of population, is distant a thousand 
miles or more from the City of Mexico; and between the 
two places, in addition, a somewhat formidable desert 
intervenes, of about a hundred miles in width, and over 
which the “ Mexican Central Railroad ” trains are obliged 
to carry a water-supply for their locomotives. Previous 
to 1883, if a revolution broke out in Chihuahua, the most 
ready method of communicating intelligence of the same 
to the central government would have been to send a man 
on foot, probably an Indian runner. If the messenger 
averaged fifty miles a day, twenty days would have been 

1 A Study of Mexico. By David A. Wells, LL.D. D. Appleton and 
Company, New York, 1887. 


2 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


consLimed in reaching the City of Mexico, and from three to 
six weeks more, at the very least, would have been required 
to dispatch a corps of trained soldiers from the capital, 
or some intermediate point, to the scene of the disturbance. 

But before this the revolutionists would have had all 
the opportunity for levying forced loans or direct plunder, 
or the gratification of private animosities, that their 
hearts could desire. And it is altogether probable that, 
in a majority of such cases, political grievances .were 
merely alleged as a pretext for and a defence of plunder; 
and it is a wonder how, under such circumstances, 
there could be any desire for or expectation of accu¬ 
mulation through production, and that universal bar¬ 
barism did not prevail. But now, under the railroad and 
its accompanying telegraph system, if anybody makes a 
proniinciamento at Chihuahua, the executive at the City 
of Mexico knows all the particulars immediately ; within a 
few days a trained regiment or battalion is on the spot, 
and all concerned are so summarily treated that it is safe 
to say that another similar lesson will not soon be re¬ 
quired in that locality. The new railroad constructions 
were, therefore, absolutely essential to Mexico as a con¬ 
dition for a healthy national life; and the country could 
well afford to make great sacrifices to obtain and extend 
them, apart from any considerations affecting trade 
development. 

But the American railroads in Mexico have, in addition, 
already done much to arouse the most stubbornly con¬ 
servative people on the face of the globe from their 
lethargy, and in a manner that no other instrumentality 
probably could have effected. When the locomotive first 
appeared, it is said that the people of whole villages fled 


THE AMERICAN RAILROAD SYSTEM IN MEXICO. II3 

affrighted from their habitations, or organized processions, 
with religious emblems and holy water, to exorcise and 
repel the monster. During the first year of the experience 
of the “ Mexican Central,” armed guards also were con¬ 
sidered an essential accompaniment of every train, as had 
been the case on the “Vera Cruz Railroad” since its 
opening in 1873. But all this is now a matter of the past ; 
and so impressed is the government with the importance 
of keeping its railroad system safe and intact, that the 
Mexican Congress recently decreed instant execution, 
without any formal trial, to any one caught in the act of 
wrecking or robbing a train. 

That any improved methods of intercommunication 
between different people or countries—common roads, 
vessels, railroads, or vehicles or the like — increase the 
production and exchange of commodities, is accepted as an 
economic axiom. But there could be no more striking or 
practical illustration of this law than a little recent experi¬ 
ence on the line of the “ Mexican National Railroad.” 

The corn crop, which is the main reliance of the people 
living along the present southern extension of this road 
for food, had for several years prior to 1885 failed by 
reason of the drought; and, under ordinary circum¬ 
stances, great suffering through starvation would inevi¬ 
tably have ensued. The natives, however, soon learned 
that with the railroad had come a ready market, at 
from two and a half to three cents per pound, for the 
fibre known as ixtle^ the product of a species of agave, 
which grows in great abundance in the mountainous re¬ 
gions of their section of country, and which has recently 
come into extensive use in Europe and the United States 
for the manufacture of brushes, ladies’ corsets, mats, cord- 


I 14 THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 

age, etc. And so well have they improved their knowledge 
and opportunities, that the quantity of ixtle transported by 
the “ Mexican National Railroad ” has risen from 224,788 
pounds in 1882 to 700,341 in 1883 ; to 3,498,407 in 1884; 
and 3,531,195 in the first seven months of 1885; while 
with the money proceeds the producers have been able to 
buy more corn from Texas than they would have obtained 
had their crops been successful, and have had, in addition, 
and probably for the first time in their lives, some surplus 
cash to expend for other purposes. 

What sort of things these poor Mexican people would 
buy if they could was indicated to the writer by seeing in 
the hut of a laborer on the line of the “ Mexican Central 
Railroad”—a place destitute of almost every comfort or 
article of furniture or convenience—a bright, new, small 
kerosene lamp, than which nothing that fell under his 
observation in Mexico was more remarkable and interest¬ 
ing. Remarkable and interesting, because neither this 
man nor his father, possibly since the world to them 
began, had ever before known anything better than a blaz¬ 
ing brand as a method for illumination at night, and had 
never had either the knowledge, the desire, or the means 
of obtaining anything superior. But at last, through con¬ 
tact with and employment on the American railroad, the 
desire, the opportunity, the means to purchase, and the 
knowledge of the simple mechanism of the lamp, had come 
to this humble, isolated, Mexican peasant; and out of the 
germ of progress thus spontaneously, as it were, developed 
by the wayside, may come influences more potent for civil¬ 
ization and the elevation of humanity in Mexico than all 
that Church and State have been able to effect within the 
last three centuries. 




FROM VERA CRUZ TO THE CITY OF MEXICO. 


II5 


A DAY’S JOURNEY FROM VERA CRUZ TO 
THE CITY OF MEXICO.i 

The distance from Vera Cruz to the City of Mexico is 
190 miles. It is traversed by a railroad which is one of 
the finest pieces of engineering in the world, and reveals 
to the traveller most magnificent scenery, crossing as it 
does the high range of the Eastern Cordilleras, tunnelling 
through mountains, bridging over great chasms, and run¬ 
ning along the brink of precipices thousands of feet deep. 
There were almost insuperable obstacles to overcome in 
the construction of this road over a high range of moun¬ 
tains. It was sixteen years in building, not being opened 
throughout its entire length until 1873, and the cost was 
^39,000,000. Almost all the stock is owned in England, 
hence it is called the “English road.” 

The scenery is especially remarkable from the fact that 
one passes in a few hours from the level of the sea to an 
elevation of over eight thousand feet, and sees the vege¬ 
tation of all zones, from the palms and hot-house flowers 
of the coast, through groves and plantations of oranges, 
bananas, coffee, and tobacco, to the corn and wheat fields 
of our own clime; thence to the pines, oaks, and ever¬ 
greens of colder latitudes, even to within sight of snow- 
peaked Orizaba. 

In no country in the world can you pass so rapidly from 
zone to zone — from the blazing shores of the heated trop¬ 
ics to the region of perpetual winter, from the land of the 

1 A Winter in Central America and Mexico. By Helen J. Sanborn. Lee 
and Shepard, Boston, 1886. 




Il6 THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 

palm and vine to that of the pine and lichen ; for in twenty- 
four hours this can be accomplished, and the traveller may 
ascend a snow peak with the sands of the shore still upon 
his shoes. 

On the morning of our departure for the City of Mexico 
we rose early, and before light passed out of the “Vera 
Cruzano,” as the servants sleeping on cots by the doorway 
were just arousing themselves for their day’s work. One 
of them followed us and solicited patronage, saying it was 
hardly safe for us to go unattended at that early hour. 
The streets were silent and deserted, and we decided to be 
relieved of our bundles and accept him as an escort. He 
conducted us to a restaurant, where he waited upon us 
himself, bringing us our morning cup of coffee, then ac¬ 
companied us to the station, found us seats on the left- 
hand side of the car, where we could get the finest views, 
and then took leave of us very politely, as if we were old 
friends. For all this very acceptable service he charged 
but five cents. We mention this because among all the 
discomforts of travelling in these countries there are some 
conveniences which we do not have at home, and one of 
these is the abundance of servants to be met with every¬ 
where, who will carry your bundles any distance, and ren¬ 
der most willing and efficient attendance for the paltry 
sum of five cents. It is their sole business, and they are 
quite happy if they get one job a day. 

The cars are marked first, second, and third class — the 
latter being occupied by Indians. We were early, and 
found we had some time to wait, but the car soon filled 
with people, nearly all Americans, who arrived the night 
before by steamer from New York. Some Mexicans who 
were parting with each other gave us opportunity to 


FROM VERA CRUZ TO THE CITY OF MEXICO. 11 / 

observe the Spanish custom of leave-taking, which seemed 
to us most peculiar. The men clasped each other in an 
affectionate embrace and pressed either cheek ; the ladies 
adopted the same method, with the addition of a kiss. 

The train starts at six o’clock, and for a while runs along 
the hot, dusty plains of Vera Cruz, but soon begins to 
ascend, and vegetation becomes more luxuriant, with 
orchids, roses, bananas, pineapples ; olive, lime, and orange 
trees ; curious air plants and a tangle of flowering vines. 
As the way grows steeper, to overcome the obstacles pre¬ 
sented by the hills the road has to wind in and out and 
over great “ barrancas ” (ravines), at whose base rush moun¬ 
tain streams. It crosses several bridges, one quite famous, 
that of Atoyas, three hundred and thirty feet long, where 
the traveller gets a view of one of the most exquisite cas¬ 
cades, tumbling over the rocks of a wild ravine, clad in the 
richest verdure. Occasionally one sees huts of the natives 
— rude structures made of poles, with thatched roofs as in 
Guatemala ; and the train stops at one or two small stations, 
crowded with Indians, who have fruits to sell. 

Our fellow-passengers, almost from the start, had all been 
looking through glasses for a glimpse of Orizaba, a volcano 
17,378 feet high, with its foot in the land of perpetual 
summer and its head in a region of everlasting cold. 

We looked in vain at first, but after a while, chancing to 
glance to the right, suddenly we beheld this most magnifi¬ 
cent spectacle, Orizaba, with its crown of dazzling snow 
glistening in the sunshine. The sight was finer than we 
could ever have imagined. It was at once very grand and 
very beautiful, and an exclamation of wonder and delight 
involuntarily escaped us at this first and unexpected view 
of a snow-capped mountain. 



Il8 THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 

The first station of importance is Cordova, which is 
situated in a rich valley at a height of 2,703 feet. It con¬ 
tains fine orange-groves and large sugar plantations, and 
is the centre of a coffee-growing district. 

Soon after leaving this station the road for a time runs 
along the brink of the wonderful “barranca” Metlac, 
which is one thousand feet deep, and then it crosses the 
chasm by a bridge commanding a fine view. The road, 
always ascending, winds in and out, dashing through dark 
tunnels, crossing bridges over deep ravines, or curving 
around a bend of the mountains. These curves are often 
so sharp that from one’s seat in the car the whole train is 
visible from one end to the other, and the winding road 
itself can be seen traversing the mountains by a sinuous 
path, like the trail of a serpent. 

The fact of the ascent is plainly shown by the change in 
the character of the vegetation, for our familiar cornfields 
begin to appear mingling with plantations of tobacco, coffee, 
rice, and sugar-cane. 

This is one of the most fertile valleys of Mexico, and to 
our fellow-passengers just from the United States — which 
they had left in cold, bleak, and dreary March — the sight 
of it was like a vision of the Garden of Eden ; to us it was 
like a second and better view, for in our journey across 
Guatemala we had scenery like this, only we saw it under 
more auspicious circumstances, a railway car being a far 
better observatory than a mule’s back. 

At half-past ten we reached the city of Orizaba, at an 
elevation of 4088 feet, having in the last sixteen miles 
climbed 1375 feet! Here we stopped long enough for 
breakfast, and weregladto find it quite eatable, the cooking 
being more American than that of Vera Cruz. The city is 


FROM VERA CRUZ TO THE CITY OF MEXICO. I I9 

ancient and very pretty, with a picturesque situation and 
quite healthful climate. It is a health resort for Vera Cruz 
during its scourges of yellow-fever. 

Leaving Orizaba, the road still ascends, and in the next 
three hours climbs three thousand feet! The country now 
grows less fertile, but the scenery more sublime. Having 
passed the noted gorge known as Infiernillo, or Little Hell, 
a giddy and terrible precipice, we were all shut in by moun¬ 
tains, and could see the winding track below and above us. 
Looking up we saw a faint line far, far above, on the very 
top of the mountain, and said to each other, “ Can it be 
possible that we are to ascend to that height ? ” It was 
indeed possible, but not to an ordinary locomotive. The 
one employed is the powerful Fairlie “ double-ender,” which 
looks like two engines combined. This giant literally began 
to climb the mountain like a fly crawling up a wall. Thus 
we ascended to the region of the pine and oak, and to a 
height greater than that of Mount Washington. 

A few miles more of gradual ascent, and at half-past 
one we reached Esperanza, the highest point, 8303 feet 
above the sea. Here a long stop is made, and an excel¬ 
lent meal served. But having breakfasted at Orizaba, we 
spend our time in viewing the station and the crowd there 
gathered. As usual, there were many Indians offering for 
sale various kinds of fruit (many of which are unknown to 
Americans), and all sorts of sweets and native eatables 
with which to tempt the Mexican taste and the curiosity 
of strangers. But the most notable of all the crowd was 
a handsome young Mexican, in a riding-suit, presenting an 
appearance elegant enough to make our greatest “ swells ” 
green with envy. With a rich, dark complexion, a fine form, 
and manly bearing, his natural beauty was further enhanced 


120 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


by his dress, which was most elegant and showy, and 
consisted of a sombrero of drab felt, with an enormously 
wide brim and a rich trimming of silver; a jacket and vest 
of spotless white, elaborately embroidered; and trousers 
of fine black cloth, with rows of silver buttons on the 
seam from top to bottom. An enormous pistol, and a dis¬ 
play of jewelry, completed his elegant toilet and enhanced 
the fine appearance of which he was fully conscious, as 
well as of the admiration which he excited. 

Then there were three armed soldiers to protect the train 
from robbery, for we were travelling in a land of thieves and 
cutthroats, and every station on the road is guarded by 
picked men, appointed by the government. The business of 
these men is to scour the country, search out bandits, and 
bring them to justice, or, rather, to death, for they are 
shot as soon as apprehended. This method has proved 
quite effectual, and so many have been disposed of in this 
summary manner that for a year there has been no train¬ 
wrecking on this road. Before this vigorous policy was 
adopted, attacks were frequent, and the train rarely 
went to Mexico with a whole pane of glass in its win¬ 
dows, because of stones thrown into the cars, and a 
passenger seldom arrived with all his possessions. 

On the train there is a guard of thirty soldiers, to protect 
it from any attack. Every Mexican carries arms, and 
considers a pistol as much a part of his dress as our 
men do a necktie. All this array of military power to 
ensure our safety in travelling, even by rail, did not im¬ 
press us very favorably with Mexico. In strong contrast 
to this, and with grateful remembrance, we think of our 
journey across Guatemala, when, with only a guide and 
one Indian, wholly unarmed and unprotected, we travelled 




Popocatepetl 







































































ASCENT OF POPOCATEPETL. 


12 


through the lonely interior of that country in perfect 
safety. 

Our journey from this point was across the dusty table¬ 
lands. We had passed all the fine scenery, and there was 
nothing of interest save Orizaba, which was still visible 
for a time. The table-lands ‘are quite barren, save for 
fields of wheat and rye the first few miles, and after that 
extensive fields of maguey, or the American aloe, from 
which “pulque,” the national drink, is made. As it was 
the last of the dry season, the dust was something fearful, 
and entered the car in clouds, so that, after leaving 
Esperanza, there was no enjoyment, or even comfort. 
Not until nine o’clock in the evening did we see the lights 
of the City of Mexico. 


ASCENT OF POPOCATEPETL.! 

It had long been my purpose, before leaving home, to 
visit the most celebrated volcanoes of Mexico. The prin¬ 
cipal of these, the famous volcano of Popocatepetl, is now 
(1883) the property of General Caspar Sanchez Ochoa. 
This distinguished gentleman was in active service during 
the war with the French, and commanded the national 
forces in the State of Puebla. President Juarez afterwards 
entrusted him with a confidential mission to our govern¬ 
ment. It was my good fortune to obtain a formal intro¬ 
duction to him. I was not only graciously accorded 
permission to ascend the mountain, but the General with 
the utmost courtesy gave me a letter of commendation to 

1 Mexico and the Mexicans. By Howard Conkling. Taintor Brothers, 
Merrill and Company, New York, 1883. 



22 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


his superintendent at Amecameca, a town near the base of 
the mountain. General Ochoa expressed his opinions with 
soldierly frankness in regard to political matters. Neither 
the Americans nor Mexicans, he warmly declared, would 
ever tolerate a king or emperor. The Mexicans had found 
it necessary, when Maximilian attempted to establish a 
military despotism on their soil, to shoot him, as they had 
before done with the Emperor Iturbide. He cherished, he 
said, a grateful remembrance of the intervention of the 
United States in behalf of his country, and he gratefully 
acknowledged its great value. Nevertheless, he had no 
doubt that the Mexicans^ alone would, in time, have ex¬ 
pelled the French from their soil. 

Popocatepetl, meaning in the Aztec language “ The 
Mountain that Smokes,” is, according to the observations 
of Baron von Humboldt, 17,720 feet in height. Later ob¬ 
servations, however, have assigned to the great volcano a 
height of 17,852 feet. It is nearly three times the height 
of Mount Washington, the highest of the White Moun¬ 
tains, and over two thousand feet higher than Mount Blanc, 
in Switzerland. Iztaccihuatl, another volcano, stands in 
close proximity to it. The name signifies “White 
Woman,” and tradition represents Popocatepetl as being 
the monarch of the mountains, and Iztaccihuatl as his 
wife. 

The ascent of Popocatepetl is a formidable undertaking. 
It is seldom made except by the peons who are employed 
in the crater. General Ochoa derives a considerable in¬ 
come from the sulphur obtained from that source. I made 
the ascent in company with my brother, who, having 
trodden nearly all of the loftiest pinnacles of the Alps, 
was well qualified by his experience to undertake the 


ASCENT OF POPOCATEPETL. 


123 


ascent of the grandest mountain of this continent. The 
volcano is fifty miles from the capital, and is reached by 
way of the Morelos Railway to Amecameca. Here we 
spent the night, and in the morning were furnished two 
guides by the superintendent referred to, who also gave us 
the key of the Rancho de Talmacas, a hut in the moun¬ 
tains, where we could pass the night. 

Several days are required to make the ascent, and the 
severest physical exertion, personal risk, exposure, and 
hardship, must inevitably be encountered. The prelimi¬ 
nary arrangements will be attended with many annoying 
delays, as the people do not like to hurry themselves, and 
must have a little time to think over every proposition 
which is made to them. Upon speaking to the hotel pro¬ 
prietor about our plans, he obtained for us a middleman, 
there being many of these in Mexico, who engaged to 
furnish horses and attend us in person. So, taking pro¬ 
visions for two days, blankets, and other necessary articles, 
we set out at two o’clock one afternoon for Talmacas, 
which is situated at a distance of twelve miles from the 
foot of the mountain. 

At first the region which we traversed was fertile and 
beautiful; next came splendid timber-lands; farther on, tall, 
sombre pines, growing in a wilderness of rank, coarse grass, 
and then came that scantiness of vegetation which is 
incident to all high altitudes. At seven in the evening we 
had arrived at the ranch, about 13,500 feet above the sea 
level, and only a short distance below the line of perpetual 
snow. It was a hut used by the peons who transport the 
sulphur on their backs ; but this being Holy Week, and, 
of course, a holiday time, they were away. We picketed 
our horses, and, entering the cabin, built a fire in the 


24 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


middle of the earthen floor, after the true Indian style. 
There was no chimney, but numerous gaps and crevices in 
the roof and walls gave abundant egress to the smoke. 
After a cold supper we lay down to sleep on some bare 
planks, wrapped in our blankets, taking care, however, to 
keep our revolvers within convenient distance. From time 
to time during the night, one of the party would rise and 
replenish the fire. This was indispensable to our comfort, 
as the piercing wind, blowing down from the region of eter¬ 
nal snow and ice, made its way into the hut on every side. 

At half-past three in the morning we arose and prepared 
to ascend the cone. I wore an ordinary heavy business- 
suit, with canvas leggings and shoes purchased for the 
occasion. A large straw hat, a havelock, and a pair of 
green goggles were worn for protection against the direct 
rays of the sun and the reflection from the snow. A pair 
of mittens, an alpenstock, and a small flannel hat stuck 
into a belt completed my outfit. One of the guides carried 
a knapsack filled with provisions. The horses were left at 
the ranch, and we set out, on foot, at half-past four in the 
morning. The full moon shone brightly, and we walked 
rapidly in Indian file through a very wild region, where we 
could see the tracks of wolves in the sand and hear them 
baying in the distance. There was something weird in 
the sighing of the night wind through the leafless branches 
of the forest. After walking a mile we came to the snow. 
From this point our labors became very severe. We went 
up very steep inclines, through snow often knee-deep, for 
about fifteen hundred feet. Nowhere was the slope grad¬ 
ual enough to admit of a moment’s relaxation. 

We now came to a vast wall, almost perpendicular, of 
hard frozen snow, which stretched upward for over twenty- 


ASCENT OF POPOCATEPETL. 


125 


five hundred feet to a point which the guides declared was 
the summit. The snow was so hard as to afford no foot¬ 
hold, thus adding inconceivably to our labor and peril. It 
would be impossible to say how far one would fall in case 
of a slip, except that the higher he had ascended the greater, 
of course, would be the descent. One of the guides went 
forward, and with a sharp spade cut steps in the snow, 
which made the ascent safer. Still the walking was very 
fatiguing. Making a zig-zag track he led the way up the 
great wall to places where those who are inclined to vertigo 
should be careful not to look down. Soon a strong sul¬ 
phurous odor was perceptible, and increased in intensity 
with each successive step, until at length it became ex¬ 
ceedingly oppressive. 

When I was still about two thousand feet from the 
summit, I began to experience the effects peculiar to a 
highly rarefied atmosphere. Keeping on five hundred feet 
higher, I was almost prostrated. I experienced drowsi¬ 
ness, a peculiar clicking and singing sensation in the ears, 
accelerated breathing, palpitation of the heart, and violent 
headache. My brother, however, experienced none of 
these inconveniences, and reached the summit nearly two 
hours before I did, almost as fresh as when he set out. 

These sensations, so often affecting mountain-climbers, 
are not by any means due to the lack of muscular power, but 
to inability to breathe comfortably in such rarefied air. 
The strongest man in the world might fail to reach the 
summits of comparatively low mountains, if his lungs were 
not suited to breathing air of this kind. By a strong 
effort of the will, I was at length able to reach the top of 
the mountain at about a quarter of an hour before noon, 
having walked, without intermission, seven hours and a 


126 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


quarter since leaving the hut. I made the last two hun¬ 
dred feet over needle-like points of ice, with every certainty 
of going thousands of feet without stopping, in case of a 
slip or a false step. 

Utterly exhausted, I threw myself on the ground just 
inside the crater, where I was partially sheltered from the 
fierceness of the wind. My brother , made me as comfort¬ 
able as possible under the circumstances, supplying me 
with dry shoes and socks, which had been brought up in 
the knapsack for the purpose. After dozing for a short 
time I was somewhat revived, and was able to get up and 
take a view of the surroundings. 

The summit has a very small superficial area, owing to 
the immense crater that meets the eye the moment the 
last upward step is taken. The crater is very deep, the 
guides say five hundred feet, but probably it is much more. 
The walls are very steep, steam issues with a puffing sound 
from various fissures, and numerous yellow masses indi¬ 
cate the presence of sulphur. At the bottom of the crater 
is a pool of clear water of a greenish hue, but I had neither 
the time, means, nor inclination to descend the precipitous 
sides and investigate the cause of its singular color. 

The Spaniards, in the early periods of their occupation 
of the country, here procured sulphur for the manufacture 
of gunpowder, but there has been some difference of opin¬ 
ion among historians, whether the Spaniards took the 
sulphur from the crater or from some crevice in the side of 
the mountain, which was in a state of eruption at about 
that period. 

In the early morning, the valleys had been covered by 
heavy clouds. The rising of the sun over them was a 
glorious sight, easier to imagine than to describe. Pres- 


ASCENT OF POPOCATEPETL. 


127 


ently they began to rise, revealing the beauties of the 
Valley of Amecameca and of the great Valley of Mexico. 
The city of Puebla and the pyramid of Cholula were dis¬ 
tinctly visible. The clouds approached nearer and nearer, 
and at last began to gather around us. The guides, at 
this moment, with signs of apprehension, urged us to set 
out at once upon our return. The wind was terrific, and 
when we were again on the icy snow there was danger 
of being thrown down by it. Accordingly, that I might 
present less surface, I gave my large hat to the guide and 
put on the small one. Of course I suffered the penalty — 
my face being blistered by the direct and reflected rays of 
the sun. 

When the most dangerous places had been passed, the 
guides each took a palm-leaf mat from their backs and sug¬ 
gested coasting. This seemed very dangerous, but it was 
undoubtedly the quickest way of getting down, and as every 
step I made was attended, exhausted as I was, with great 
effort and even pain, I decided to try it. I sat down 
behind one of them, and away we went down the steep 
incline, making about five hundred feet at a time. In the 
early hours of the day, when the snow remained hard, from 
the influence of the low temperature of the night, this 
would have been nothing short of foolhardy, but it was 
now past noon, and the snow had been softened by the 
heat of the sun. We could stop at intervals by selecting 
for the purpose some particularly soft spot, or by putting 
our alpenstocks behind and throwing our weight upon 
them, at the same time burying our heels in the snow. 
After the novelty wore off we resumed walking, and 
arrived at the ranch in a'bout two hours, when we imme¬ 
diately commenced preparations for returning to the plain. 


128 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


A COFFEE PLANTATION IN GUATEMALA.^ 

There is not a more beautiful sight than a coffee planta¬ 
tion, with its shrubs of rich dark green, bearing white 
fragrant blossoms and bright crimson berries; and the 
visitor to Guatemala, whether specially interested in coffee 
or not, will be sure to visit one after another of these fine 
estates. They usually cover many acres ; have good build¬ 
ings, fine avenues of trees, and large gardens nicely laid 
out, containing beautiful and often rare plants and shrubs. 
The owners are generally wealthy men, either Spaniards 
or Germans, and always receive visitors with the greatest 
pleasure and cordiality showing them all about the estates 
and sending them away loaded with flowers. 

The plantations cover acres of ground and the land is 
perfectly cultivated — not a weed or spear of grass is 
allowed. The coffee plants are set out at equal distances, 
and in rows on a perfect line; all of them are of uniform 
size and height, and the tops look as perfect as a hedge 
that has been trimmed with the greatest care. The average 
crop of a plantation is about one thousand to fifteen hun¬ 
dred quintals annually.. One plantation near the port of 
Champerico exports fifteen thousand bags and has three 
hundred and eighty thousand trees. 

The coffee plant is a shrub growing to the height of 
twelve to fifteen feet in its wild state, but under cultivation 
is kept down to six or eight feet. The shrub has a single 
stem, opening out at the top into long, dense, drooping 

1 A Winter in Central America and Mexico. By Helen J. Sanborn. 
Lee and Shepard, Boston, 1886. 



Coffee Culture 






























































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































A COFFEE PLANTATION IN GUATEMALA. 12 g 

branches, which fall to the ground, making an unusually 
beautiful looking plant. The leaves are long and pointed, 
and of a dark, rich, glossy green. The flowers come out 
from the angle of the leaf in groups of from four to twelve, 
and are small, white, and fragrant, resembling the jessa¬ 
mine. The fruit succeeds the blossom, and very much 
resembles a cranberry, in color, form, and size. When ripe 
the berries are of a dark crimson color, and consist of a 
pulpy mass containing two oval seeds, which are convex 
on one side and flat on the other, and lie together face to 
face, separated only by a thin skin or parchment. Some¬ 
times only one seed forms, and in process of growth, as it 
pushes itself against the dividing membrane and encounters 
no opposing growth, it naturally rounds over and makes 
the small, round bean known as peaberry. 

To secure the proper growth of the coffee, plenty of 
shade is required. To reach this result on some planta¬ 
tions, the plants are set out several feet apart, and between 
them are planted shade trees which grow to a great height, 
with the foliage on the very top. On other plantations 
banana trees are planted in like manner for the same pur¬ 
pose. When these rules are not followed the coffee plants 
are placed very close together and when fully grown the 
tops meet, making a solid body of very dark foliage, shut¬ 
ting out every ray of sun from the ground. 

The conditions for the cultivation of coffee in Guatemala 
are very much unlike many other coffee-growing countries ; 
a very large part of the coffee grown in Guatemala is on 
table-lands, or high plains, at an elevation of four thousand 
feet or more, and the varieties of soil are very marked, 
varying from a deep rich black loam to a red clay or sandy 
soil, all of which are sometimes to be found in one or two 

K 


30 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


miles ; consequently, in order to purchase Guatemala coffee, 
and get a high standard and uniform quality, every condi¬ 
tion of growth and preparation must be known to the 
buyer. 

These conditions are : the proper elevation, location, the 
particular kind of soil, the planter’s manner of cultivation, 
facilities for curing, and proper machinery. One single 
condition left out of the many is almost sure to produce a 
coffee of inferior quality. 

Most of the planters are rich and have complete machin¬ 
ery. Large planters have the latest improved and best 
machinery, with power, usually steam. The works are 
quite extensive, and always located as near as possible in 
the centre of a plantation. If a running stream of water 
can be obtained in such a location, it is of great benefit; 
for plenty of water saves labor and makes a more “ stylish ” 
coffee. 

The berries are picked and carried to the factory, where 
they are run through a pulping machine, a stream of water 
passing through the hopper with the berries. The machine 
breaks the pulp, separates the berry, and the pulp is carried 
off and spread around the trees for dressing. The coffee 
berry runs off in a spout into a reservoir, which has a 
cemented bottom enclosed by masonry — a cemented wall 
about two feet high, making it water-tight ; water is run 
through with the coffee bean, when it is washed ; the water 
is then drawn off, and the coffee remaining is dried in the 
sun ; it is then put through a machine which breaks the 
skin, winnows it, and makes it perfectly clean from chaff 
and dirt; the coffee is next all hand-picked, or graded, 
making some four qualities ; then it is bagged and when 
sold transported to a railroad or shipping port by carts or 
on the backs of Indians. 


GUATEMALA CITY. 


I3I 


GUATEMALA CITY.i 

Guatemala City is called, on account of its prosperity, 
the Paris of Central America. It is situated in a broad, 
fertile valley, almost entirely surrounded by deep barran¬ 
cas, or ravines, and has an elevation of 5,270 feet above 
the sea. 

The climate is simply perfect — the finest in the world. 
It is neither too warm nor too cold, seldom above eighty 
or below sixty degrees, with scarcely ten degrees difference 
between winter and summer, or, more properly speaking, 
between the rainy and dry seasons. It is, in fact, an ideal 
climate, just adapted for gardens of roses and violets the 
year round. We were there in the dry season, and it was 
a luxury we appreciated never to have to wonder, when 
planning an expedition, if the weather would favor us. 
We were sure of bright sunshine every day. The rainy 
season lasts from May to October, and we were assured by 
those living there that it is not at all disagreeable. They 
have no long, dreary rainstorms such as we have here, but 
at about the same time every afternoon a tremendous 
shower of rain, after which the sky is clear again. Much 
is said by every traveller to Mexico about the fineness of 
the climate; but visiting both places in the same winter, 
we had an excellent chance to compare the two, and, 
though they are similar, we pronounce most decidedly in 
favor of Guatemala as being more healthful and agreeable. 

The present capital was built in 1775, after the destruc- 

1 A Winter in Central America and Mexico. By Helen J. Sanborn. Lee 
and Shepard, Boston, 1886, 


32 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


tion (by an earthquake) of the former capital, now called 
Antigua, and has a population of about 45,000. The 
streets are wide, regular, and well paved. There are lines 
of horse-cars running to all parts, and just the night before 
we left the electric light was introduced for lighting the 
city. There are many public buildings, parks, squares, 
and beautiful gardens. It seemed to us, on the whole, a 
very pleasant city. 

The houses, though mostly of one story, on account of 
the earthquakes, are frequently large and comfortable. 
The architecture of the houses is that of Southern Spain. 
They are all built in the form of a hollow square, and the 
interior court, containing trees and flowers, is often very 
beautiful. They are not at all prepossessing from the 
exterior, presenting to the street a blank white wall with 
barred windows and a huge solid door like that of a prison; 
but the moment the door is opened in response to the 
noise of the great knocker, the visitor is ushered into the 
interior court and into a scene of verdure and beauty. 

There are many fine churches, built by the Spaniards; 
in fact, with the exception of Mexico, they are the finest 
in Spanish America. The exterior is beautifully orna¬ 
mented, and the interior contains magnificent altars, beau¬ 
tiful paintings and frescoes, and many images of Christ, 
Mary, and innumerable saints. 

Guatemala has, comparatively speaking, good schools 
throughout the country, but especially at the capital, 
where many come to be educated. President Barrios^ 
made a law that every Indian should learn to read and 
write, though there were not many to support him in this 
good work. 


1 Killed in battle. 


THE PANAMA RAILROAD AND THE CANAL. 1 33 

There are two large “collegios” in this city, a visit to 
which proved very interesting. They were formerly exten¬ 
sive convents, but Barrios converted them into schools. 
All the appointments are complete ; there are maps, charts, 
diagrams, and apparatus requisite for a good, thorough, 
advanced education. Of course they are not equal to 
ours, but are fine for the country. Both schools are pro¬ 
vided with large courts for out-of-door recreation, and 
with an ample hall and gymnasium. Attached to the boys’ 
school, which is the largest, and numbers about 300 pupils, 
is a fine, large museum, containing a valuable collection; a 
zoological garden, containing all the birds and animals of 
the country ; and another garden, full of rare and beautiful 
trees, plants, and flowers. 


THE PANAMA RAILROAD AND THE CANAL.i 

One morning I took the Panama train en route for the 
Pacific coast, and rode from eight a.m. to early afternoon 
through the heart of the isthmus, of which we have heard 
so many fabulous tales from the early California miners. 
The orange and the jessamine were in full bloom. The 
cocoanut, mango, betelnut, banana, and plantain grew in 
wild profusion on either side, and the bamboo and palm 
lent their thick jungle to enhance the view. Figuratively 
speaking, a dead body lies between each tie of the line. 
Hundreds of lives were sacrificed to the fatal fever during 
the construction of the road, and $500,000 spent in one of 
its bridges over the Chagres River. Even to-day the ties 

1 Pleasant Hours in Sunny Lands. By Isaac Newton Lewis. De Wolfe, 
Fiske & Co., Boston, 1888. 


134 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


are of lignum vitae, and cost from three to five dollars 
apiece. No other wood will withstand the climate. The 
Jamaica negro, the Chinaman, and the native Indian man¬ 
age to exist, but the latter alone appears to take comfort, 
and that possibly because social life is not too exacting, 
and his children can bask at will in the birth-given robes 
of nature,, and can earn their living by merely an out¬ 
stretching of the hand. Numerous little and lean black 
hogs peer out of the bamboo huts. Contrasted with the 
children, they are quite neat and clean. This railroad 
was located by Colonels Hughes and Totten of New 
York, and was incorporated at that place in 1849; but 
before completion the floods made such havoc that pretty 
much all of it had to be repaired. It was not possible to 
open it until 1855. Five thousand men and $7,500,000 
were required. 

When the railroad was opened, the long perilous journey 
around Cape Horn was superseded by an easy and speedy 
trip by rail for about forty-nine miles through a tropical 
paradise. It is true the ship fever was less fatal than the 
fever of the isthmus, yet the exposure was so slight that 
comparatively few died therefrom. It is equally true that 
many preferred to walk across to paying a fare of $50 to 
$75 then asked for what we now get for but $5. The 
usual steerage passage from San Francisco to New York 
in those days was $150, and often more, and there were 
often so many applicants for berths that $450 in gold were 
sometimes given for another’s ticket. 

Aspinwall, named after Captain Aspinwall of New York, 
is the northern terminus of both the Panama railroad and 
the canal, which the French have for years been trying 
to construct to unite the Atlantic and the Pacific. This 


THE PANAMA RAILROAD AND THE CANAL. 


135 


canal was one of my chief objects of interest here, as 
I wished to compare it with the Suez, constructed by the 
same persevering and enterprising Lesseps. Only about 
thirteen miles are navigable, but the ground is broken 
nearly the whole distance to Panama, its southern termi¬ 
nus, and is easily distinguished by long lines of reddish 
soil peculiar to this section, contrasting with the light 
green of the herbage on the surface. No one here believes 
in the possibility of its completion. Machinery to the 
amount of thousands of dollars, unadapted to the work, 
lies exposed to the severe climate — a total loss. Lesseps 
had a comparatively easy task through the level sand 
plains of Eastern Egypt, where the Bitter Lakes and 
ancient canal from Cairo to Suez only needed widening 
and deepening; but here, rock, mountain, river, and swollen 
flood hampered him at every step. 




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SOUTH AMERICA. 




THE CLIMATE OF BRAZIL.i 


Those whose tropical experience has been in the East 
Indies or the western coast of Africa can have no just 
conception of the delightful climate of the greater portion 
of Brazil. It would seem as if Providence had designed 
this land as the residence of a great nation. Nature has 
heaped upon her bounties of every description; cool 
breezes, lofty mountains, vast rivers, and plentiful pluvial 
irrigation are treasures far surpassing the sparkling gems 
and rich minerals which abound within the borders of this 
extended territory. No burning sirocco wafts over this 
fair land to wither and desolate it, and no vast desert, as 
in Africa, separates its fertile provinces. That awful 
scourge, the earthquake, disturbs no dweller in this Empire. 
While in a large part of Mexico, and also on the west 
coast of South America, —from Copiapo to the fifth de¬ 
gree of south latitude, — rain has never been known to 
fall, Brazil is refreshed by copious showers, and is endowed 
with broad, flowing rivers, cataracts, and sparkling streams. 
The Amazon, — or, as the aborigines term it. Par'd, “ the 
father of waters"—with its mighty branches, irrigates 
a surface equal to two-thirds of Europe; and the San 
Francisco, the Parahiba do Sul, the vast affluents of the 
La Plata, under the names of the Paraguay, Parana, 

1 Brazil and the Brazilians. By James C. Fletcher and D. P. Kidder. 
Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1868. Out of Print. 

139 


140 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


Cuiba, Paranahiba, and a hundred other streams of lesser 
note, moisten the fertile soil and bear their tributes to the 
ocean through the southern and eastern portions of the 
Empire. Let any one glance at the map of Brazil, and 
he will instantly be convinced that this land is designed 
by nature for the sustenance of millions. 

Now, there must be some reason for this bountiful 
irrigation, this fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate. 

Lieutenant Maury has shown conclusively why it is that 
Brazil is so blessed above corresponding latitudes in other 
lands. South America is like a great irregular triangle, 
whose longest side is upon the Pacific. Of the two sides 
which lie upon the Atlantic, the longer — extending from 
Cape Horn to Cape St. Roque — is 3500 miles, and looks 
out upon the southeast; while the shorter— looking north¬ 
eastward— has a length of 2500 miles. This configura¬ 
tion has a powerful effect upon the temperature and the 
irrigation of Brazil. The La Plata and the Amazon re¬ 
sult from it, and from those wonderful winds, called the 
trades, which blow upon the two Atlantic sides of the 
great triangle. These winds, which sweep from the north¬ 
east and the southeast, come laden, in their journey over 
the ocean, with humidity and with clouds. They bear 
their vapory burdens over the land, distilling, as they fly, 
refreshing moisture upon the vast forests and the lesser 
mountains, until, finally caught up by the lofty Andes, in 
that rarefied and cool atmosphere they are wholly con¬ 
densed, and descend in the copious rains which perpet¬ 
ually nourish the sources of two of the mightiest rivers of 
the world. The prevailing winds on the Pacific coast are 
north and south. No moisture is borne from the ocean to 
the huge barrier of mountains within sight of the dashing 




Bay of Rio de Janeiro 
































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































THE BAY OF RIO DE JANEIRO. I4I 

waves; and hence the aridity of so much of the hypoth- 
enuse of the triangle. I have beheld the western and 
eastern coasts of South America within thirty days of 
each other, and the former seemed a desert compared with 
the latter. 

No other tropic country is so generally elevated as 
Brazil. Though there are no very lofty mountains except 
upon its extreme western border, yet the whole Empire 
has an average elevation of more than seven hundred feet 
above the level of the sea. 

This great elevation and those strong trade-winds com¬ 
bine to produce a climate much cooler and more healthful 
than the corresponding latitudes of Africa and Southern 
Asia. The traveller, the naturalist, the merchant, and the 
missionary do not have their first months of pleasure or 
usefulness thrown away, or their constitutions impaired by 
acclimating fevers. 


THE BAY OF RIO DE JANEIRO.^ 

The Bay of Naples, the Golden Horn of Constantinople, 
and the Bay of Rio de Janeiro, are always mentioned by 
the travelled tourist as pre-eminently worthy to be classed 
together for their extent, and for the beauty and sublimity 
of their scenery. The first two, however, must yield the 
palm to the last-named magnificent sheet of water, which, 
in a climate of perpetual summer, is enclosed within the 
ranges of singularly-picturesque mountains, and is dotted 
with the verdure-covered islands of the tropics. 

1 Brazil and the Brazilians. By James C. Fletcher and D. P. Kidder. 
Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1868. Out of Print. 


142 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


The first entrance of any one to the Bay of Rio de 
Janeiro forms an era in his existence. Even the dullest 
observer must afterward cherish sublimer views of the 
manifold beauty and majesty of the works of the Creator. 
I have seen the most rude and ignorant Russian sailor, 
the immoral and unreflecting Australian adventurer, as 
well as the cultivated and refined European gentleman, 
stand silent upon the deck, mutually admiring the gigantic 
avenue of mountains and palm-covered isles, which, like 
the granite pillars before the Temple of Luxor, form a 
fitting colonnade to the portal of the finest bay in the 
world. 


GATHERING RUBBER IN BRAZIL.^ 

We leave Para with the midnight tide ; by gray morning 
we are steaming across the Bay of Marajo, which is not 
a bay at all, but properly a continuation of the Para River, 
or its connection with the Tocantins. The wind blows 
briskly over the wide reaches, swaying our harrimocks 
under the arched roof of the upper deck; we roll our 
blankets closer around us, and let who will retreat to the 
stifling state-rooms. But if Boreas cannot unwrap us, 
Phoebus brings us out quickly enough ; we jump up with 
the sun shining in our eyes, and all around us the bright 
waves leaping and dancing for joy to see the beautiful 
morning. 

The Indian pilot points out numbers of rubber-trees, 
and we learn to recognize their white trunks and shining 

1 Brazil. By Herbert H. Smith. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 
1879. 


GATHERING RUBBER IN BRAZIL. 


143 


bright green foliage. This low tide-region is one of the 
most important rubber districts, where hundreds of serin- 
gueiros are employed in gathering and preparing the crude 
gum. Occasionally we see their thatched huts along the 
shore, built on piles, and always damp, reeking, dismal, 
suggestive of agues and rheumatism ; for the tide-lowlands, 
glorious as they are from the river, are sodden marshes 
within, where many a rubber-gatherer has found disease 
and death. 

The little town of Breves owes its prosperity to this 
dangerous industry. It is built on a low strip of sandy 
land, with swamps on either side coming close up to the 
town ; even along the water-front the main street is a suc¬ 
cession of bridges. But the houses are well built of brick 
or a* 3 obe, and the stores contain excellent stocks of the 
commoner wares. The place looks fresh and pretty 
enough ; the miasma of the swamps does not often rise 
to the highlands, so we are not loath to remain here for 
a few days, and study the rubber industry more closely. 

In the river-town there are no hotels ; but we are pro¬ 
vided with a letter of introduction, which insures us a 
hearty welcome and a home as long as we care to stay. 
For the Amazons is a land of hospitality. Out of Para, 
a stranger, even unintroduced, will always find shelter 
and food, and for the most part without a thought of 
remuneration ; but, if on a longer stay he occupies a house 
of his own, he will be expected to extend the same hos¬ 
pitality to others. 

The rubber-swamps are all around, but land travelling 
is out of the question. So an Indian canoe-man is engaged, 
— a good-natured fellow, and an adept in wood-craft. He 
sets us across the river at a half-ruined hut, where bright 


144 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


vines clamber over the broken thatch and hang in long 
festoons in front of the low door-way; but within, the 
floor is sodden black clay, and dark mould hangs on the 
sides, and the air is like a sepulchre. The single slovenly 
mameluca woman who inhabits the place complains bitterly 
of the ague which tortures her; yet, year after year, until 
the house falls to pieces, she will go on dying here, 
because, forsooth, it is her own, and the rubber-trees are 
near. She will not even repair the structure. You can 
see sky through the roof; but if rain drives in she will 
swing her hammock in another corner, and shiver on 
through the night as best she may ; for to-morrow there 
are rubber-trees to be tapped, and a fresh harvest of the 
precious milk to be brought home, — and what will you 
have ? One must expect discomfort in a swamp. 

Back of the house the rubber-trees are scattered through 
marshy forest, where we clamber over bogs, and sink into 
pools of mud, and leap the puddles ; where the mosquitoes 
are blood-thirsty, and nature is damp and dark and threat¬ 
ening. Where the silence is unbroken by beast or bird 
— a silence that can be felt, it is like a tomb in which we 
are buried, away from the sunshine, away from brute and 
man, alone with rotting death. The very beauty of our 
forest tomb makes us shudder by its intenseness. 

In the early morning, men and women come with bas¬ 
kets of clay cups on their backs, and little hatchets to gash 
the trees. Where the white milk drips down from the 
gash they stick their cups on the trunk with daubs of clay, 
moulded so as to catch the whole flow. If the tree is a 
large one four or five gashes may be cut in a circle around 
the trunk. On the next day other gashes are made a little 
below these, and so on until the rows reach the ground. 


GATHERING RUBBER IN BRAZIL. 


145 


By eleven o’clock the flow of milk has ceased, and the 
seringueiros come to collect the contents of the cups in 
calabash jugs. A gill or so is the utmost yield from each 
tree, and a single gatherer may attend to 150 trees or 
more, wading always through these dark marshes, and pay¬ 
ing dearly for his profit in fever and weakness. 

Our mameluca hostess has brought in her day’s gather¬ 
ing— a calabash full of the white liquid, in appearance 
precisely like milk. 

If left in this condition it coagulates after a while, and 
forms an inferior whitish gum. To make the black rubber 
of commerce the milk must go through a peculiar process 
of manufacture, for which our guide has been preparing. 
Over a smouldering fire, fed with the hard nuts of the 
tucuma palm, he places a kind of clay chimney, like a 
wide-mouthed, bottomless jug; through this the thick 
smoke pours in a constant stream. Now he takes his 
mould—in this case a wooden one, like a round-bladed 
paddle — washes it with the milk, and holds it over the 
smoke until the liquid coagulates. Then another coat is 
added — only now, as the wood is heated, the milk coagu¬ 
lates faster. It may take the gatherings of two or three 
days to cover the mould thickly enough. Then the rubber 
is still dull white, but in a short time it turns brown, and 
finally almost black, as it is sent to the market. The mass 
is cut from the paddle and sold to traders in the village. 
Bottles are sometimes made by moulding the rubber over 
a clay ball, which is then broken up and removed. Our 
old-fashioned rubber shoes used to be made in this way. 

During the wet months, from February until June or 
July, this ground is under water, and the seringas are 
deserted by every one. The floods would not entirely 

L 


146 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


interrupt the gathering, were it not that the gum is then 
weak, and of comparatively little value. Besides, the trees 
need this period of rest to make up for the constant sum-, 
mer drain. The rubber months, then, are from June or 
July until January or February, varying somewhat with 
the year and the district. During this period, many 
thousand persons are employed in tapping the trees. All 
of them are of the poorer class—-Indians, mulattoes, and 
Portuguese immigrants, who like nothing better than 
wandering, half-vagrant life. 


SOCIAL LIFE AT RIO.i 

Here, as everywhere else, it takes all sorts of people to 
make up a community. Only, in Brazil, the proportion of 
really good families,— refined, educated ones,— is very 
much smaller than in the United States ; too small, as yet, 
to exercise much influence over the country. When you 
meet with these families, you find a social life differing 
very little from that to which we are accustomed at home; 
pure manners, intelligent conversation, and a hearty re¬ 
spect for every true lady. The ladies themselves are 
quick-witted, lively, brilliant; one of them would flash all 
over a northern drawing-room, to the utter extinction of 
dull conversation. 

But the mass of Rio society is much louder; it is a bad 
imitation of the Parisian. I think, indeed, that there is 
a deal of unconscious truth in the boastful title which the 
people have given to their city, “ Paris in America.” 

1 Brazil. By Herbert H. Smith. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 
1879. 


SOCIAL LIFE AT RIO. 


147 


French fashions, French literature, French philosophy, 
French morals, are spread broadcast through the educated 
circles ; only you must remember that all this is modified 
by strong class distinctions, which the French have got 
rid of, and by the influence of old, bigoted, Portuguese 
ideas. 

Ladies go about with their husbands and fathers, and 
are always treated with politeness ; they are witty and 
lively, but often superficial. The time is past when they 
were shut up like nuns, behind latticed windows, invisible 
to the street; when they were shown only at balls and on 
state occasions. 

But true social freedom is hardly more accorded to them 
than it was a hundred years ago. If the custom of be¬ 
trothing children has gone by, it is still true that a woman 
has very little choice in her own disposal. The majority 
of girls, I suppose, accede blindly to their fathers’ wishes, 
taking the husbands that are offered to them as a matter 
of course, and glad of any change to relieve the monotony 
of their life. There may be a previous understanding 
between the young people, but society does not recognize 
that ; until she is married a woman’s fate rests with her 
father or guardian; the mother has very little to say 
about it. 

The same surveillance is seen in every-day life. A girl, 
if she goes out at all, walks the street with a black servant 
at her heels ; ladies sometimes venture on shopping excur¬ 
sions, but, for the most part, they buy from samples that 
are sent to them, or from one of the numerous tribe of 
street-peddlers. You may see these latter at any time, 
passing from house to house, with their glass boxes of 
small goods on their backs or in a cart; sometimes, if 


148 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


they are well-to-do, they have a negro to carry their box 
for them. They do a very thriving business. 

Altogether, social life at Rio is in a most chaotic con¬ 
dition, and it is not likely to mend greatly at present. 
What can we expect where marriage is looked upon as a 
matter of convenience only, and a woman is a grown-up 
child, a creature to be guarded and restrained ? I have 
no patience with them, these absurd rules that have come 
down from the dark ages and rooted themselves in a civil¬ 
ized community, to turn it black like themselves. No 
man, in his heart, will be faithful to an inferior ; no woman 
restrained, but will sigh for freedom. Go your way, my 
fine gentleman ; lock your doll in her parlor, and return 
to find a woman with the womanhood driven out of her,— 
a creature stealthy, subtle, quick to betray you as you 
have betrayed her. You say that she needs education, to 
fit her for liberty. She needs liberty to fit her for educa¬ 
tion ; and she needs a true heart to make them both 
avail her. 

I wish I could speak better of this place, but I know of 
no other city where vice is so brazen-faced, so repulsively 
prominent, as at Rio. You must not judge the whole by 
what you see ; there are many good men, even here ; there 
is pure society, with happy home circles in it ; there are 
men and women who come together as God meant they 
should, and respect each other, and go on to the white- 
haired ending, hand in hand, with comfort and cheer. Nor 
must you judge other Brazilian cities by Rio, for this is a 
centre of wickedness, as all capital cities are. Pernambuco, 
for instance, is immensely better. In truth, almost any 
other place in Brazil will compare favorably with the 
metropolis in private morals. 


AMERICAN FARMERS ON THE AMAZONS. 


149 


But family life at Rio has another and a brighter side. 
It is what one sees with all the Latin nations; the affec¬ 
tion that is wanting between man and wife is lavished by 
both upon the children ; and then, when the boys and 
girls are grown, the debt is repaid tenfold with dutiful care 
and loving attention. We, too, have a lesson to learn ; we, 
who so often let our fathers and mothers go down to a 
sterile, loveless old age, living with us by sufferance, 
shoved away with other household rubbish when they 
may be. I can almost forgive a Brazilian for his social 
mud, when I see his pride and joy over the white-haired 
father. Careful, loving arms guide the old man to his seat 
in the evening sunshine ; quick, youthful feet are ready for 
his every want; and then the younger children come in 
for his blessing and kiss his hand; strangers are brought 
to pay their respects to him, as he sits there in his halo 
of patriarchal glory. 


AMERICAN FARMERS ON THE AMAZONS.^ 

If ten American travellers were asked to give their 
views of Brazil, we would hear ten different opinions, 
grading all the way from paradise to despair. And I sup¬ 
pose that Brazilians travelling in the United States get 
just as diverse impressions of this country and its people. 

When anybody asks me if Brazil is a good field for the 
American mechanic, farmer, or merchant, I can only 
answer. That depends entirely upon the man. The coun¬ 
try is what it is; but you or I describe it as what it is 

1 Brazil. By Herbert H. Smith. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 
1879. 


150 THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 

not, because we see it only from our particular angle 
of vision; we judge of it as it has treated us well or ill. 
The question resolves itself into this : What are the ad¬ 
vantages and disadvantages of life in Brazil ? What men 
should come here if they please, and what men should 
stay at home in any case ? In answer, we can only seek 
to know the experience of old American residents ; their 
success or want of success, and the reasons therefor. We 
can have no better field for these inquiries than the Lower 
Amazons. 

There is a great creaking of wheels and a confusion of 
driver-shouting. Down the Santarem Street come four 
brown horses, dragging an immense American wagon; 
a tall coatless individual sits astride of one of the leaders, 
and guides the, cavalcade with much flourish and noise. 
He draws up in front of St. Gaetano’s store, and salutes 
the merchant; then alights and marches straight up to us, 
remarking : “ Wal! Who are you ? ” 

Of course we get acquainted at once, and Mr. Platt 
is a man worth knowing, too. He is one of some fifty 
Americans who are established in the forest near by ; 
Platt himself is a Tennesseean ; the others are from Missis¬ 
sippi, Alabama, and so on. In its origin the colony was 
much larger. Over two hundred persons came here from 
Mobile, in 1866, under the guidance of a certain Major 
Hastings. This was shortly after the great civil war, 
when the subject of Brazilian immigration was much agi¬ 
tated in our Southern States. People who had lost every¬ 
thing were willing enough to begin again on new soil; the 
Brazilian government encouraged them to come, and agents 
were paid so much per head for their importation. Natu¬ 
rally, these agents drew a very glowing picture of Brazil, 


AMERICAN FARMERS ON THE AMAZONS. I5I 

and said nothing at all about the difficulties that immi¬ 
grants would have to meet. 

None of the colonies were very successful; this one of 
Santarem was badly made up in the outset ; with a few good 
families there came a rabble of lazy vagabonds, offscourings 
of the army and vagrants of Mobile, who looked upon the 
affair as a grand adventure. Arrived at Santarem, they 
were received kindly enough, but after a little the good 
people became disgusted with their guests, who quarrelled 
incessantly and filled the town with drunken uproar. Gov¬ 
ernment aid for the colony was withdrawn ; gradually the 
scum floated away, leaving the memory of their worthless¬ 
ness to injure the others. The few families that remained 
had to outlive public opinion, and a hard time they had of 
it, with poverty on one side and ill will on the other. But in 
time the Brazilians discovered that these were not vaga¬ 
bonds; they learned to respect their industry and perse¬ 
verance ; and now, all through the Amazons, you will 
hear nothing but good words of the Santarem colony. 

Farmer Platt presses us to “come out for a few days.” 
So, when the wagon moves off presently, we are seated 
in the bottom of it, among sundry bales of dried fish and 
baskets of mandioca-meal—the week’s provisions. The 
farmer cracks his whip sharply; the sun is low already, 
and the wheels must wade through eight miles of sand 
to-night. Bare-legged boys come out to stare; the wagon 
has not ceased to be a wonder, and truly it is a noteworthy 
spectacle, with the four horses and our tall farmer. The 
wagon, Mr. Platt informs us, was sent from his old home 
in Tennessee, and it had to pass through many vicissitudes 
of custom-house and travel before it reached this place. 
Long ago, a law was passed by which agricultural imple- 


152 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


ments could be introduced, free of duty; but practically, 
this law is a dead letter in almost every case, and even if 
it is allowed, the importer must be put to a vast amount 
of trouble. Mr. Platt’s wagon paid quite as much for duty 
as it cost in the outset; everybody knows that this extor¬ 
tion was illegal, that the duty was excessive in any case ; 
but poor Platt has no redress, except by a litigation which 
he cannot afford. So he submits, and grumbles, as a 
thousand other good men are grumbling. And Brazil 
wonders why immigrants do not come. 

By the time we have toiled up one long slope and down 
another, darkness begins to fall. The land, thus far, is 
sandy campo; trees are scattered over the surface, not 
close enough for shade, nor thickly leaved enough to be 
called luxuriant; they are low and gnarled ; bushes and 
grass cluster about the roots, but there is no continuous 
undergrowth. The road is merely a track, winding among 
the tree-clumps until it enters the forest, five miles from 
Santarem. 

It is too dark now to see how great the change is ; only 
the trees rise high on either side, and the branches almost 
meet against the gray sky above. Platt’s shouts to his 
horses have a different sound among the echoes; he 
stoops now and then, to avoid a branch. Here and there 
great vine-stems hang down from the darkness above; in 
making the road they have been cut away near the ground, 
but the ends are still low enough to give the driver an 
occasional rap; he swings them right and left into the 
bushes with a great crash ; we in the wagon must look out 
for our hats. The darkness grows deeper, until the tree 
trunks are lost in gloom and our driver is hardly visible. 
The forest seems to be higher ; we can just see a few 


AMERICAN FARMERS ON THE AMAZONS. 153 

glinting stars overhead, where the gaps are widest. Tree- 
frogs and crickets are chirping all around ; a night-bird 
wails from the branches ; once or twice we catch glimpses 
of moths or bats flitting above us. 

Presently we stop with a jerk ; one of the wheels is 
caught in a big liana. Francisco, Mr. Platt’s man, gets 
out of the wagon and cuts away the obstruction with a 
wood-knife. Then we go on, now running against a tree, 
now sinking deep into a rut, getting through somehow 
with horse-muscle and man-muscle. We pass a clearing 
and a little thatched house, hardly visible in the darkness. 
Mr. Platt and Francisco are discussing the owner of this 
house, an Indian, who is a noted hunter in these parts. 
Half a dozen jaguar skins he has, and more he has sold ; 
there are scores of the animals on the hill beyond his 
house. Only a week ago he shot a very large one, but not 
until he had lost his best dog by a blow from the creature’s 
paw. Francisco goes on to tell other hunting stories, and 
adventures of his own in the woods; the conversation 
takes a wonderful interest, with the darkness around and 
the moaning of the wind above. 

By and by we alight to stretch our legs, walking beyond 
the slow-going wagon ; we feel our way rather than see it, 
so dark the road is. There are white ant-hills along the 
sides — pale glows of phosphorescent light, like coals in 
the ashes. They look ghostly in the darkness, and we 
think of the jaguar stories with a little tremor. But pres¬ 
ently comes the cheery shout behind, and the creaking of 
the wheels ; and beyond there is a great clearing and a 
house, whence the dogs are pealing a noisy welcome to our 
party. 

The farmer’s wife welcomes us cordially ; the children 


154 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


are shy, for they do not often see strangers. Greetings 
over, we swing our hammocks under the thatch ; the air 
is cool and pleasant — a little cold towards morning, so 
that we have need of our thick blankets. 

But what a glorious sight we have with the morning 
sun! All around there are splendid masses of green 
cacao-trees, and lime-trees, and great pale banana-plants, 
and coffee-bushes straying up into the woods; beyond 
those, a bit of untouched forest, with a giant Brazil-nut 
tree towering over it, 200 feet at least, and with never a 
branch for 120 feet from the ground. Back of the house 
there is a steep hillside — a mass of rolling forest to the 
top. This is the edge of a table-land, which extends over 
all the country to the south, and rises in bluffs along the 
Tapajos and below Santarem. 

The American families have located themselves along the 
ba.se of this table-land at half a dozen different points. The 
streams give them water, and their plantations of sugar-cane 
are on the rich black land along the edge of the plateau. 
This plateau, by way of distinction, is called the montanha, 
but there is nothing mountainous in its character ; it is sim¬ 
ply a low table-land, about 500 feet above the river — a spur, 
probably, of the higher region in Central Brazil. There are 
outlying hills on the campo, and the highland forest has 
extended over the lower ground two or three miles. With 
all the beauty of. the site, Platt evidently has a hard time 
of it; he looks careworn and a little discouraged. The 
land is excellent, but the stream is too small to give him a 
good water power, and without that he cannot manage a 
large cane plantation. He complains of the low prices 
that he receives for his produce. The Santarem traders 
take advantage of his helplessness, and he is often obliged 
to sell below the market value. 


AMERICAN FARMERS ON THE AMAZONS. 155 

All the Americans are cultivating sugar-cane. The 
juice is distilled into rum, which is sold at Santarem. 
Probably coffee or cacao might pay better, but our colo¬ 
nists came here without money, and they could not wait 
for slow-growing crops. Mr. Platt tells how he and his 
family were housed, with the others, in a great thatched 
building; how the colonists were supported for a while on 
government rations, until they could locate their planta¬ 
tions and get in their first crops ; how they had to struggle 
with utter poverty, work without tools, live as best they 
could until their fields were established. Platt saved a 
little money and bought this ground of an old Indian 
woman; it was only a small clearing, with a dozen fruit 
trees. The family lived in a rough shed until they could 
build a thatched house, and Platt himself had to bring pro¬ 
visions from Santarem, six miles, on his back. It was a 
long time before he could cut a road, and longer before he 
had horses for his work. 

Consider the difficulties that this man had to meet. In 
the United States an emigrant without money will gener¬ 
ally find employment of some kind until he can start a 
farm of his own. Moreover, when he is able, he can get 
tools, machinery, whatever he needs, close by home, and at 
a low price. His crops meet with a ready sale; railroads 
and steamboats bring the market to his door; his land in¬ 
creases in value constantly with the growing population. 
But these Santarem Americans were brought face to face 
with the matted forest; they could not work for other 
men, except at such a price as the Indians get — fifty 
cents per day at most; their market was unreliable; they 
were forced to mortgage their crops in advance to obtain 
tools and provisions for their families, and hence they 


56 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


always sold at a disadvantage. Finally, they had no.ma¬ 
chinery for their work beyond what they could make them¬ 
selves. Platt had to grind his cane with a rough wooden 
mill until he could procure an iron one from the United 
States — at double the original cost, no doubt. He had to 
get his still on credit, and pay a high price for it; horses, 
oxen, carts, casks, were all obtained by slow degrees, and 
at a great sacrifice. He has been his own carpenter, 
mason, machinist — everything. It was a long time be¬ 
fore he could even hire an Indian to work for him. And 
now, after seven years of hard struggle, he finds himself 
with — what.? A plantation that he could not sell for 
one-fourth of its real value, simply because there are no 
buyers ; a burden of debts that it will take him a long time 
to pay; and himself with a broken-down body and a dis¬ 
couraged heart. 

This is the hard reality which every penniless immigrant 
must find for himself in Brazil. It is not the fault of the 
country ; the Amazons Valley is as rich as our western 
prairies are. But in the West a man works with other 
men ; besides the farmer-immigrant, there are blacksmiths, 
carpenters, machinists ; agriculture and manufactures go 
hand in hand ; division of labor pushes everything for¬ 
ward, as in a rapid river. On the Amazons a poor man 
has only himself to depend upon ; he is in a stagnant pool, 
a standstill country. Without money he will advance very 
slowly, and his ultimate success is altogether doubtful. 


A TROPICAL FOREST. 


157 


A TROPICAL FOREST.i 

One day I made an excursion to the end of the railway 
which is intended eventually to extend to the large town 
of Branganca, about eighty miles from Para to the north¬ 
westward. At present, however, the road is only completed 
about half of this distance. It is a narrow gauge, with 
rolling-stock of English make, and one train a day is run 
each way. Only a single town of any importance graces 
the road, and the district generally is very thinly peopled. 
But the opportunity presented of seeing the forest is 
unrivalled, for the country is quite level and covered with 
almost impenetrable jungle throughout the entire distance. 
A space for about fifty feet has been cleared, on both sides 
of the track, and the little villages generally face the road in 
long straggling rows. The-train was full of natives. The 
women were neatly dressed in light calicoes, and their luxuri¬ 
ant black hair was ornamented with flowers, but they neither 
wore hats nor carried parasols. The men were dressed 
in thin black cloth, and smoked and chatted constantly. 

But what shall I say of the forest ? One never tires 
gazing at it. Its novelty is perpetual. The largest trees 
would average one hundred feet in height, with trunks 
three or four feet in diameter, and generally very straight, 
with but few branches, and these near the top. The first 
thing that strikes the beholder of a tropical forest is the 
almost solid mass of verdure, the vast quantity and variety 
of plant-life; the second is the generally tall and slender 

1 In and About South America. By Frank Vincent. D. Appleton and 
Company, New York, 1890. 


158 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


character of the trees, and the fact that each has leaves, 
for the most part, only on top. Here one readily compre¬ 
hends the doctrine of the “survival of the fittest,” for all 
are struggling in a dense mass upward for light, sun, and 
air. Hence you observe the very summits of the loftiest 
covered with orchids, lichens, and vines, many of which 
send their roots down a hundred feet to the ground, at the 
bases of the trees upon which they thrive. Frequently 
you notice a parasitic plant whose foliage towers above, 
and is greater than that of the tree which it has scaled. 
And then, from tree to tree, and limb to limb, is an intri¬ 
cate net-work of luxuriant lianas, the appearance of which 
continually reminded me of the rigging of a great ship. 

The lower half of the forest was composed of so many 
smaller trees that their thin straight stems alone almost 
shut out the light. The surface of the ground was covered 
with a tangle of creepers and trunks, and decaying vegeta¬ 
tion of all kinds. 

In temperate regions, you find, in a day’s ramble, a single 
representative of a genus ; but here under the equator, you 
discover a dozen. During my short ride I casually counted 
fourteen species of the palm. Upon arriving at the ter¬ 
minus of the railroad, I took a walk of a couple of miles 
along a path entering directly into the forest. The still¬ 
ness was mournful and oppressive. The only sign of 
animal life was comprised in a few birds, butterflies, and 
lizards. The birds gave forth no song, only occasionally a 
frightened screech. The butterflies were large and very 
pretty; and a toucan, that sailed quietly by, looked like a 
fragment of a rainbow. 

Though I heard no animals, and could of course see 
none in so dense a growth, I made no doubt the forest was 


A TROPICAL FOREST. 


159 


as prolific in them as in vegetable life — not perhaps in 
quadrumana, but certainly in reptiles and insects. In the 
heart of the great woods one does not see many flow^ers 
others than orchids, but some of these were most interest¬ 
ing from their singular form and the peculiar arrangement 
of their blossoms and fleshy tubers. Some of the tree- 
trunks are fluted, others honey-combed, others larger above 
than below. Some are reared upon stilts of roots, some 
are buttressed by narrow slabs of living wood which fre¬ 
quently, to ensure the better brace, project twenty feet 
from the giant pillar they are steadying and supporting. 
Then, again, the enormous variety of leaves, both in shape 
and size, all massed together, and all new and strange to 
eyes accustomed to a more meagre flora, prove of unflag¬ 
ging interest. 

As I walk slowly along, I feel as if in a fog, or Russian 
bath, it is so damp and steamy. Below is the moisture, 
and above are the light and sun, which together produce 
such a lavish display of plant-life. 

The tropical forest is not only grand and solemn, it is 
also graceful and beautiful. The delicacy and elegance of 
some of the palms are very wonderful. The vast beds of 
trailing creepers are so soft and rich as to resemble the 
choicest velvet. And notice especially the shades of green 
in the foliage, which vary from the faintest, most illusive 
tints, to the heaviest and darkest green-black. It is always 
twilight in the primeval forests of the torrid zone. It did 
not, therefore, require a very vivid imagination to fancy 
that the body and limbs of some old sylvan monarchs, 
wound about by huge parasitic climbers, were thus pinioned 
by massy cordage. 


6 o 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN BRAZIL. 

And now I am naturally brought to a consideration of 
the general subject of Brazilian slavery and emancipation, 
which, however, has been so freely and so frequently dis¬ 
cussed in our daily journals and elsewhere, that I need 
but recount briefly my own impressions. By the law of 
the 28th of September, 1871, it was declared that from 
that date every new-born child of a slave within the limits 
of the Empire should be free. All government slaves and 
slaves of the imperial household were also declared free. 
With the object of gradually freeing the slaves of private 
individuals, the same law established an emancipation 
fund, the proceeds of which were annually applied for this 
purpose. The total extinction of slavery, without danger to 
public safety, and without detriment to the rights of private 
property, thus seemed assured at no very distant date. 

A few months before I went to Rio, a law was passed 
making all slaves who were sixty-five years old free 
unconditionally, and manumitting all other slaves upon 
their attaining the age of sixty, on condition of their con¬ 
tinuing, until the age of sixty-five, to serve their former 
masters. Under this law, slaves who were over sixty, but 
under sixty-five, at the time it was passed, would, though 
practically free, have longer or shorter periods of servi¬ 
tude still before them, according as their ages approx¬ 
imated that at which absolute freedom became their right. 
Those who had that right might, if they preferred, remain 

1 In and About South America. By Frank Vincent. D. Appleton 
and Company, New York, 1890. 


ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN BRAZIL. l6l 

with their former masters, at a certain remuneration, 
unless they chose another manner of earning a living for 
which they were considered fit by the judges of the 
orphans’ courts. An official valuation was fixed on all 
others, and an additional five per cent tax on all revenues, 
except export duties, was imposed for the interest charges 
on the proposed emancipation bonds, and for increasing 
the emancipation fund. The maximum price from the 
emancipation fund necessary to free a slave, under the 
new law, was $450. 

But there seems to have been a rapidly growing discon¬ 
tent among the slaves. In the southern part of the prov¬ 
ince of San Paulo a great simultaneous slave revolt had 
been planned for Christmas eve, 1886, but was detected at 
the last moment by one of the planters. An alarm was 
given and military despatched to the disaffected planta¬ 
tions. There was a concerted action among the slaves 
which boded ill for the future. The peculiar dangers of 
the situation were dangers which must have increased 
with lapse of time. The much-used statement that the 
end of this century would see the end of negro slavery in 
Brazil was not, under the system of enfranchisement, at 
all correct. There was still a large slave population which 
was being freed at an infinitesimally slow rate — only 
about one a year out of every two hundred of their 
number. 

Brazil had a large free negro population, which enjoyed 
all the privileges of white citizens. It acquired material 
advantages in the matter of wealth and position through 
the use of its freedom. The emancipation fund distribu¬ 
tions among certain of their race were naturally observed 
with bitter disappointment and envy by the slaves. The 

M 


i 62 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


natural result of all this was to make them discontented 
and dissatisfied. It aroused feelings of desperation which 
in the end tended to revolt; and this danger increased 
from year to year. 

What should be done.? The emancipation question had 
been studied from so many sides in Brazil, so many new proj¬ 
ects had been tested, only to be afterward rejected, that I 
hesitated to give an opinion. And yet it seemed to me, with 
such light on the puzzling subject as I could obtain from 
every quarter, that instantaneous and total manumission 
would be the better course. The only way in which the 
Brazilian could disarm and avoid his threatened ruin was by 
decreeing immediate emancipation, and making suitable 
provisions for attaching the freedmen to the soil, for which 
negroes were better fitted than any other race which could 
be brought into the country. Thus I wrote in 1886. Two 
years afterward, on May 17, 1888, the Brazilian Senate 
passed a bill—which had been passed by the Chamber 
of Deputies the preceding week — granting immediate and 
unconditional emancipation. 

On May 18, 1888, a government decree was issued, 
appointing three days for festivities in celebration of the 
abolition of slavery. During those days the public offices 
and almost all the private establishments were closed. 
The festival commenced with a gtand mass in the open 
air, in the great square of Dom Pedro I., celebrated with 
immense pomp, in the presence of the Princess Regent 
and family, the ministers of State, the foreign representa¬ 
tives, officers, and officials of every rank, numerous corpo¬ 
rations, societies, and schools, the garrison and naval 
forces of Rio, and an immense assemblage of people. 

After this imposing ceremony and a naval and military 


AN EXTRAORDINARY REPUBLIC. 163 

parade were over, grand processions of schools, societies, 
corporations, students, and public and private employes of 
all classes were organized, day after day, and marched 
with bands, banners, orators, and addresses through the 
principal streets, which were all decorated with flags and 
foliage, and at night were brilliantly illuminated. The 
theatres were opened gratuitously to the public, and on 
May 20th, at night, two of the public squares were trans¬ 
formed into open-air ball-rooms, to whose gratuitous 
Terpsichorean exercises the people of Rio, and especially 
the newly-made citizens, were invited — an invitation as 
largely accepted as generously offered. 


AN EXTRAORDINARY REPUBLIC.i 

The attention of people in this latitude has been so 
absorbed by local affairs, that political and commercial 
phenomena on the southern continent have passed unob¬ 
served. History is being written to the south of us as 
well as across the Atlantic, and events of universal inter¬ 
est and importance are occurring in constant succession. 
Chili, the most audacious and aggressive of nations, is 
ambitious to control, and ultimately to possess, the con¬ 
tiguous republics. The Argentine Republic, like a young 
giant, is just becoming conscious of her strength, is plung¬ 
ing with feverish impulses into all sorts of public improve¬ 
ments, and undertaking the development of her resources 
with more energy than prudence. Peru is prostrate and 
impoverished, and the grasp of her creditors is on her 

1 An Extraordinary Republic. By William Eleroy Curtis. Cosmopoli¬ 
tan Magazine for September, 1889. 


164 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


throat. Venezuela, which, like “ the sick man ” of the 
East, is usually suffering from some political ailment, is 
gradually becoming convalescent; but Colombia, during 
the last twelve or fifteen months, has been making history 
very rapidly and has been the scene of unusual and sur¬ 
prising events of which the Northern world knows nothing. 

On the 12th of December, 1887, a strange thing happened 
in Colombia. The President of the Republic, Dr. Rafael 
Nunez, left Bogota secretly with his wife and family. The 
next day, when he stopped on his journey for rest and 
refreshment, he telegraphed his Secretary of State that he 
was going to his home in Carthagena, and should not return. 
Weary of the struggle to maintain his power, anathematized 
by the party which had elevated him to the presidency, 
suspicious of the sincerity of his new supporters, and fear¬ 
ing assassination by agents of the interests he had betrayed, 
he fled from the capital. There was no formal abdication 
of authority, no resignation of his office, not even an offi¬ 
cial announcement, but merely a private message to the 
head of his cabinet, which meant, if it did not say, that he 
had abandoned the government, and it must get along as 
well as possible without him. 

On the following day, when the flight of Nunez became 
known, there was popular rejoicing. The streets were 
filled with processions, the walls of the half-ruined capital 
echoed huzzahs, the air wais aflame with fireworks, and a 
mass-meeting of citizens was held to commend and ratify 
the action of the Executive Council in proclaiming Eliaso 
Payan President. He held the office of Primero Desig- 
nado, or First Vice-President, is a Liberal, a lawyer by 
profession, has been a general in the Colombian army, 
minister to France, and has at different times been a mem- 


AN EXTRAORDINARY REPUBLIC. 165 

ber of the Senate and House of Deputies, and presiding 
officer of both bodies. His first official act, upon taking 
the executive chair, was to declare the freedom of the press, 
which had been suppressed by Nunez; and his second act 
was to recall from exile, and restore to the full rights of 
citizenship, twenty-six public men. Liberals, who had been 
banished by his predecessor. 

Dr. Nunez was a distinguished lawyer of the ancient 
city of Carthagena. He was elected President of the 
Republic by the Liberal party in April, 1884, but almost 
immediately forfeited the confidence of his supporters by 
his conservative and reactionary tendencies. Then followed 
the long and disastrous revolution of 1884-5, which the 
Liberal party attempted to overthrow him. The entire 
resources of the government, including its credit, were 
exhausted; most of the shipping upon the Magdalena 
River, the main artery of commerce, was destroyed ; the 
only railway in the country was torn up; the telegraph 
poles were stripped of their wires; many important public 
works were ruined, and private property devastated; the 
city of Aspinwall was entirely consumed by incendiary 
fires, and the sacrifice of human life was very great. But 
the President succeeded in maintaining his government, 
and continued to rule until 1886, when, by the votes of the 
conservative element, and the banishment or imprisonment 
of most of the Liberal leaders, he was re-elected. 

But the country has been in a constant turmoil ever 
since, chiefly because of the reactionary policy of the 
President. An amendment to the Constitution was 
adopted, abolishing the Federation, and creating a Union 
like that of the United States. The official name of* the 
country, which until 1861 was “The Republic of New 


l66 THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 

Grenada,” and then until 1866 “The United States of 
Colombia,” was changed to “ The Republic of Colombia,” 
and the authority of the President considerably extended. 
He was virtually made Dictator, with power to suspend 
the operation of the law. 

The Colombians are naturally a restless people. There 
is no country on earth where the spirit of patriotism is 
more highly developed, or where politics is the occupation 
of so large a proportion of the population. They were 
the first to rebel against the authority of Spain, and under 
the leadership of Bolivar the first to establish their inde¬ 
pendence. Eighty-five per cent of the inhabitants are 
ignorant, submissive peons, of the aboriginal or mixed 
nativity, who care very little who governs them, or in 
what manner they are governed; but they make good 
soldiers, and are as willing to fight under one leader, and 
for one principle, as for another. They are obedient to 
the commands of their officers, and being fond of activity 
and excitement, reckless of their own lives, and regardless 
of the lives of others, can always be relied upon to create 
as much disturbance and cause as much disaster as possi¬ 
ble whenever the orders are given. 

The remaining fifteen per cent of the population are to 
a large degree highly educated men, and most of them 
make politics more or less of a profession. 

The young, progressive, and enterprising element com¬ 
pose the Liberal party. They have travelled, and realize 
by the comparison of conditions in their own country 
with those in other lands the advantages of modern civ¬ 
ilization. They favor the free and compulsory education 
of the masses, the development of the natural resources 
of the country, the immigration of foreigners, the expan- 


AN EXTRAORDINARY REPUBLIC. 16/ 

sion of trade, the adoption of democratic institutions, the 
introduction of modern conveniences for labor and trans¬ 
portation, and particularly advocate the absolute separa¬ 
tion of ecclesiastical and secular affairs. They repudiate 
the temporal authority of the Church, while they still 
adhere to the Catholic faith. 

The struggle between the Church and the Liberal party 
has been a political issue, as in Venezuela, Chili, the 
Argentine Republic, and the Republics of Mexico and 
Central America. As a Liberal, in sympathy with the 
ideas I have described, Nunez was elected; but he now is, 
or until recently was, the recognized head of the con¬ 
servative or clerical party, and to escape punishment at 
the hands of the adherents he had betrayed, vacated the 
Presidential chair. But the advanced Liberal policy of 
Payan, the Vice-President, who succeeded him, was not to 
be tolerated, and in response to the demands of the con¬ 
servative leaders, Nunez, on the 12th of February, 1888, 
returned to the capital, and resumed his authority; as, 
under the Constitution of the country, he was permitted 
to do. 

Serious complications soon arose, and Nunez abdicated 
for the second time, and on the 6th of August, 1888, Dr. 
Carlos Holquin, who had been elected Primero Designado, 
or First Vice-President, in the place of Payan, took the 
chair of the Executive. Holquin continues in the presi¬ 
dency, and Nunez is in retirement at his residence at 
Carthagena, twelve days’ journey from the capital, where 
he is in perpetual danger of assassination by those who 
have suffered from his tyranny. 

If it were not for the disordered political condition of 
the country, which has been almost chronic, and if Bogota 


1 68 THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 

were not so difficult to reach, the capital of Colombia 
would be a much sought and most agreeable place of 
resort; for the climate is perfect, and the atmosphere 
peculiarly adapted to persons afflicted with pulmonary 
complaints. The city is only about four degrees north 
of the equator, but, being situated in the mountains, nine 
thousand feet above the level of the sea, the temperature 
seldom varies more than eight or ten degrees from January 
to December, and averages sixty degrees Fahrenheit. 
There is, therefore, no change of season, and perpetual 
June. It would be difficult to find a stove or an overcoat 
in all Bogota, and from the cathedral tower, which com¬ 
mands a view of the entire city, not a chimney nor a plume 
of smoke can be discovered. The wet months are March, 
April, May, September, October, and November, when 
there is usually a heavy rain each afternoon or evening, 
but during the remainder of the year not a drop falls, and 
the sky is cloudless. 

Two crops of vegetables and cereals are raised annually 
from the same soil, and all the fruits and garden products 
of the temperate zone, as well as those of the tropics, can 
be found fresh in the market every day of the year. But 
it is a long journey by sea to reach Savanilla, the port of 
the capital, and a still longer one up the Magdalena River 
to Honda, from which the remaining distance of seventy- 
five miles must be made on mule-back, and requires at 
least four days, without comfortable stopping places, and 
no agreeable diversions except the sublime scenery of the 
Andes. 

If there has been any change in the city during the last 
half century it has been for the worse, because of the fre¬ 
quent revolutions, and the lack of enterprise on the part 


AN EXTRAORDINARY REPUBLIC. 


169 


of the government as well as the people. For these rea¬ 
sons, and on account of its isolated situation, Bogota has 
shared but little in the progress of civilization, and is the 
least modernized, as well as the most inaccessible, of all 
of the South American capitals. 

According to a census taken ten years ago, the popula¬ 
tion is eighty-five thousand, considerably less than it was 
at the beginning of the century, although the citizens claim 
that the enumeration was imperfect, as the peon popula¬ 
tion, not understanding its purpose, and supposing that 
their names were being taken by the government for mili¬ 
tary service or taxation, evaded the officers as much as 
possible. 

There are several good schools and a university at 
Bogota, the latter having an astronomical observatory 
erected in 1802, said to be the highest and most advan¬ 
tageously situated of any in the entire world. There is a 
military academy organized some years ago by Lieutenant 
Semly, one of the ablest young officers in the United 
States Army, who was detailed by President Arthur for 
that purpose, at the request of the Colombian Government. 

The national library, with a valuable collection of 
ancient books, numbering sixty or seventy thousand, has 
attached to it a museum containing many interesting and 
precious historical relics. Among them is one-half of the 
banner borne by Pizarro in the conquest of Peru, which is 
said to have been embroidered by the fair hands of Queen 
Isabella. The other half is in the municipal palace at 
Caraccas. The banner was captured at Lima by the soldiers 
of Bolivar’s army during the war of independence, and thus 
divided to satisfy the demands of the Colombians and 
Venezuelans for the treasure. 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


170 


SIPPING MATE.i 

I DO not think I have yet spoken of the practice of 
mate sipping among the people in Paraguay, Uruguay, 
and the Argentine Republic. Mate and cigarettes are as 
ubiquitous here as coffee and pipes in the Levant. Mate 
is taken the first thing in the morning, and again about 
the middle of the afternoon, regularly. Then, besides, 
whenever you call upon a person, at any time of day or 
evening, mate is generally served as a delicate attention, 
whether your visit is of business or friendship. 

The mate is always proffered in a little egg-shaped 
gourd, no more than four inches in depth and three in 
diameter. This is first nearly filled with the mate from 
a little opening at the smaller end, and then very hot 
water is added to the brimming-point. A long brass or 
silver tube, the size of an ordinary lead-pencil at whose 
lower extremity is a sort of spoon pierced with holes, is 
then inserted. This spoon is used to stir the mate, and 
through the tube you imbibe the tea. The gourd holds 
only a few swallows, and after being emptied is taken out, 
refilled with hot water, and handed in turn to each of the 
others in the company. It frequently thus circulates half 
a dozen times, a boy being constantly employed in serving 
it. Sometimes a little sugar is added, but I found the 
natural taste a rather pleasant bitter. It is a strong stim¬ 
ulating drink, whose tonic influences extend over several 
hours. 

1 In and About South America. By Frank Vincent. D. Appleton and 
Company, New York, 1890. 


IN AND ABOUT QUITO. 


I7I 

Wealthy people have their mate gourds carved, and the 
silver drinking-tubes elaborately ornamented with figures 
of plants and birds. All these people, both rich and poor, 
use the mate, and besides, great quantities of it are exported 
to Brazil and other more distant South American States. 

The appearance of the yerba-viXdXk^, or tea-shrub, is like 
the English holly. It grows without cultivation on the 
borders of the wilderness, and there are even entire forests 
of it. There are only two simple processes in the prepara¬ 
tion of the mate, which thus gives it a certain advantage 
over the Chinese product. The first is the cutting of the 
trees and the gathering of the young leaves, which are 
generally dried in the field over quick fires. The second 
process is the crushing of the dried materials, which is 
carried on at a mate-mill. The one which I saw at Tupu- 
rupucu had six wooden stampers worked by teeth, placed 
spirally round the circumference of a revolving cylinder. 
The motive power was a strong mule. Other and larger 
mills, however, derive their power from water passing an 
overshot wheel of great diameter. These frequently turn 
out three tons of mat6 per day. 


IN AND ABOUT QUITO.i 

The system of the Andes is the longest in the world, 
though not the highest, that being the Himalaya. The 
Andes lie in parallel ranges, which enclose elevated valleys. 
This plateau and mountain section are from one hundred 
to two hundred and fifty miles in width. 

1 Around and About South America, By Frank Vincent. D. Appleton 
and Company, New York, 1890. 


72 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


Quito lies nearly at the northern extremity of a valley, 
or, more properly, of an elevated plateau, which extends 
from the borders of Peru to the United States of Colombia, 
a distance of about four hundred miles. This plateau, 
which is nearly two miles above the sea-level, has an 
average width, throughout, of about forty miles, and is shut 
in from the rest of the world, as it were, by the giant 
ranges of the Cordilleras, one of which I had crossed in my 
journey from Guayaquil. 

Entering upon the plateau, I found a “ right royal ” road, 
lined with gigantic sentinels of rock and ice and snow, 
many of them the loftiest and most famous peaks in the 
world. From one of the neighboring hills, I obtained a 
good general view of the city, which slopes gradually 
toward the east and extends over the spurs of several hills 
that cause very abrupt irregularities of surface. It is laid 
out nearly at right angles, with neatly-paved streets, but 
very narrow sidewalks. 

Each landholder is obliged every day to brush that part 
of the public thoroughfare before his property. He is 
also compelled at night to display a candle, and with these 
alone is the city lighted, save in the great square, where 
kerosene lamps are substituted. A fine of forty cents for 
each offence is imposed upon those who neglect to sweep 
or illuminate their portion of the public streets. 

Quito has a decidedly monotonous appearance as viewed 
from an eminence. There are only three or four church 
edifices and towers to vary the dull uniformity of the 
houses; and the streets themselves, rarely more than 
twenty feet in width, make but slight marks of division. 

The roofs of most of the houses project over the narrow 
sidewalks, thus affording some shelter to pedestrians in 
the rainy season. 


IN AND ABOUT QUITO. 


173 


The streets seem always filled with people, both on foot 
and on horseback, and the many-colored ponchos worn 
produce a gay effect. Several of the more wealthy resi¬ 
dents possess carriages. I saw the President and his 
family taking the air in an elegant barouche, and the Vice- 
President walking in the conventional funeral black, 
which seems so incongruous in such a latitude, with such 
primitive surroundings. The climate of Quito, which lies 
nearly under the equator, is delightful, —a spring the year 
round. 

One morning I visited one of the cemeteries, where the 
poor are consigned to the ground and the rich enclosed in 
mural vaults or niches, as in Italy and other European 
countries. I found a great excavation in the hillside, 
which had been bricked around and arranged in three 
terraces of niches, each of the latter numbered and just 
large enough to hold a coffin. When the bodies are thus 
disposed of, the tombs are sealed and covered with the 
customary inscriptions. Should the rent for these niches 
be in default for two years, the bones may be removed 
from the coffins and thrown into a general receptacle like 
a cistern. I saw several coffins whose contents had been 
unceremoniously disposed of in this manner. One would 
suppose that such a threat of ejectment would be unneces¬ 
sary among people with means above abject poverty, but 
I was informed that this was not the case, and that fre¬ 
quently the bodies of the rich found their way at last to 
the common grave. 

In returning to the city I passed a large market held in 
one of the principal squares. The people were mostly 
Indians, covered with gay-colored ponchos, who had 
brought upon their donkeys produce of all kinds from the 



174 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


neighboring farms. There was a great quantity of grain 
and vegetables, not so large a supply of fruit, and but 
comparatively little meat. The people squatted upon the 
ground, with their supplies grouped about them. Every¬ 
thing was sold by bulk, either in simple handfuls or in 
basketfuls. Nothing was weighed. The principal prod¬ 
ucts were wheat, barley, maize, beans, potatoes, guavas, 
oranges, and apricots. 

Quito is supplied with a good hospital; for, notwith¬ 
standing the fact that its climate is so nearly perfect — like 
the month of May in the Northern United States — yet so 
great are the changes from the hot sun of midday to the 
chills of evening, that pneumonia and other lung and also 
throat troubles are very prevalent. Upon entering a 
gentleman’s house, I was always advised to retain my hat, 
and it is not customary for gentlemen calling in the even¬ 
ing to remove their cloaks. The hospital has about five 
hundred beds. It is under the direction of French Sisters 
of Charity. There are also a lunatic asylum and a retreat 
for lepers. The lunatics are well cared for, having com¬ 
fortable cells and suitable food. The lepers, though of 
course housed by themselves, are allowed to marry. They 
were a piteously horrible-looking set, who leered and grinned 
at me behind the barred windows. There is an observa¬ 
tory in Quito, well supplied with instruments of good 
quality, but it lacks a director, and no astronomical work 
is at present being done. A large theatre is in process of 
erection. 

The rich men of the capital prefer sending their children 
to Paris or London to obtain their education, though Quito 
owns a college. The court-yard of this building is filled 
with flowers, surrounding a central fountain, and the 


IN AND ABOUT QUITO. 


175 


students may be seen walking up and down the corridors 
repeating their lessons aloud. The library consists mostly 
of old books in Spanish, Latin, and French. The museum 
contains a small collection of stuffed animals, insects, 
minerals, shells, and corals. There is a good chemical 
laboratory. 

In company with a Quito friend and an Indian guide, I 
made a visit of a couple of days to the celebrated peak of 
Pichincha, which has the deepest crater and is the highest 
continuously active volcano in the world. It is not visible 
from the capital, but may be reached by five hours’ ride to 
the west. Pichincha, in the Indian language, signifies the 

boiling mountain.” 

Leaving the city in the late afternoon, we rode about 
half the distance to the summit, over several of the minor 
ridges southwest of Quito, and remained over night in a 
small farm-house. At four the next morning we mounted 
our horses for the remainder of the ascent. The trail was 
exceedingly steep and slippery from recent rains, and both 
of us had disagreeable and dangerous falls. But, as we 
steadily ascended ridge after ridge, we were rewarded by 
splendid views of the valley and ranges of minor hills behind 
us, and of huge snow-capped peaks at great distances on 
every side. 

The rich and fertile valley of Quito was prettily diver¬ 
sified with fields of wheat, barley, and clover. Here and 
there were small villages, and between them detached farm¬ 
houses, each with its little assemblage of out-buildings. 
We were soon above the clouds, which began to fill some 
of the valleys with their silvery fleece, which once or twice 
we mistook for a lake glistening in the morning sun. We 
had passed beyond the zone of trees, and, entering that of 


176 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


Stunted shrubs, saw just before us nothing more of life save 
coarse grass. Even up to the very brim of the crater there 
were numbers of animals — rabbits, humming-birds, a few 
condors, and at least one fox. 

The cone of the volcano several times loomed directly 
before us, but, as usually happens in the translucent atmos¬ 
phere of great altitudes, we seemed constantly nearing 
without prospect of touching, like the notorious asymptote 
that mathematicians love. But finally we succeeded. The 
last part of the ascent, though very steep, may be made 
by horses and mules to the actual edge of the crater. The 
long, jagged outline of the summit is composed of rough, 
bare rocks, whitish sand, pumice, and ashes. For a con¬ 
siderable distance below the top we threaded our way 
between huge bowlders and masses of conglomerated lava 
— the field of stones which all the volcanoes of Ecuador 
possess in common. We dismounted a few moments before 
reaching the summit, in order to place our saddle-horse in a 
sheltered nook, but the mule bearing our breakfast we led 
into the crater with us. 

The great distinguishing feature of Ecuador, as of all 
the other countries on the west coast of South America, 
is the gigantic mountain system. Before leaving home I 
erred, I think, in company with many others, in my gen¬ 
eral idea of the arrangement and appearance of the 
Andes. I imagined, as with the Himalayas, that there 
were long ranges of snow-crested mountains, from which 
occasionally arose the peaks celebrated in geography and 
history. But this is wrong, at least so far as the peaks of 
Ecuador are concerned, for her ranges are rarely topped 
with snow, and are, comparatively speaking, low, while the 
loftiest summits are almost universally isolated. Hence 




GLIMPSES OF LIMA AND THE PERUVIANS. I// 

the astonishing yet charming effect produced by low ranges 
of green hills, above and far beyond which appear, at almost 
every angle of the compass, the glistening cones or domes 
or jagged points of world-famous peaks. 

It is said that in some places the Andes are sinking, 
and if so, a connection may be hypothetically traced 
between the frequent earthquakes and certain of these 
subsidences. The city of Quito is known to have sunk 
26 feet in 122 years; the peak of Pichincha 218 feet in 
the same time; and the farm of Antisana, one of the 
highest of human habitations, 165 feet in 64 years. The 
squeezing of the crust of the earth produced by such 
shrinkages must cause violent dislocations in the surround¬ 
ing regions. Hence the earthquakes that appall the world. 


GLIMPSES OF LIMA AND THE PERUVIANS.^ 

From the summit of one of a range of hills, called 
Cerro de San Cristobal, a short distance to the north, the 
best panoramic view of Lima and its surrounding moun¬ 
tains may be obtained. It is then seen that the city lies 
upon level ground near a small river, the Rimac, which is 
quite dry most of the year, but so swollen at times, by the 
melting of the snow in the mountains, that its banks have 
to be walled with great stones. 

Lima is laid out at right angles. The streets are about 
twenty feet in width, and paved with cobble-stones ; the 
sidewalks are rarely more than three feet wide. A curious 
and awkward custom is that of giving the streets a new 

1 In and About South America. By Frank Vincent. D. Appleton and 
Company, New York, 1890. 

N 


78 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


name on each block, so that you have to remember the 
same street under a score or so of names. Tram-cars run 
in the chief thoroughfares. Native owners introduced 
them. A ride in them costs the equivalent of two and 
a half American cents. There are also hackney-coaches 
like some of those in New York; they are remarkably 
cheap and in universal demand. For one passenger, a ride 
to any part of the city costs but ten cents ; or, the coach 
being hired by the hour, it can be kept all day for fifty 
cents. The city is lighted by gas supplied from huge 
brackets attached to the walls of about every fifth house. 

The dwelling-houses of the wealthy and cultured upper 
classes of Lima are built upon the same general plan 
which one finds in all Central and South American coun¬ 
tries. The distinguishing features are the flat roof; the 
inner court, from which the rooms are generally lighted 
and entered ; and the architectural limitation to one or two 
stories. The balconies always face the street. If the 
windows open on the street, they are usually heavily 
barred, and used more for ventilation in extremely hot 
weather than for the admission of light. 

A broad and lofty gateway in the centre of the house will 
conduct you over a marble pavement, with porters’ rooms 
on each side, and through a small court probably furnished 
with huge pots or boxes of flowers, or graceful plants with 
brilliantly colored leaves, directly to what we should call 
the front door. This opens immediately into the sitting- 
room or family parlor, which is softly illuminated from 
windows facing the court you have just crossed. As you 
enter, you have a pleasant view across this room to the 
grand saloon and another court, also filled with flowers, 
and beyond this to the doors of the dining-room. Still 




GLIMPSES OF LIMA AND THE PERUVIANS. 1 79 

farther on are the pantry, kitchen, laundry, and servants’ 
quarters facing upon yet another court, and reached from 
the street by a long private hall, quite separate from the 
remainder of the house. 

On the side opposite the rooms I have been describing, 
and extending the entire length of the house, are the 
smoking-room, library, and the sleeping and private rooms 
of the family. All these communicate, and when no 
guests are present are in the daytime kept open from one 
end of the house to the other. The large number of 
rooms and the great convenience of their general arrange¬ 
ment first please the eye and awaken the admiration of 
the stranger. Such a lavish display of space is quite 
novel to a traveller from the cities of the Northern part of 
the American continent. 

The typical house of which I am speaking has but one 
story, so there is no labor in mounting an indefinite num¬ 
ber of staircases, as with us, though of course there must 
still be some delay in the movements of the servants. 
Pictures, ornaments, and souvenirs of travel are distrib¬ 
uted throughout the rooms. The public parlors are a little 
more lavishly furnished than with us, though one will 
never find an outrage against what is understood as good 
taste. Rich velvet carpets cover the floors. The chan¬ 
deliers are of silver and crystal, valuable paintings adorn 
the walls, cabinets of curiosities occupy the corners, huge 
albums load the tables. A piano of the best make, and 
generally from New York, is always present, as are guitars 
and mandolins. The dinner table you find profusely sup¬ 
plied with silver and cut glass, and weighted with game, 
vegetables, fruits of unique character, and wines of vin¬ 
tages strange to the foreigner. 


i8o 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


House rent in Lima is very high, and so also is the cost 
of furnishing a house in modern style since so many things 
have to be imported from distant countries. Coffee is 
generally taken on rising, at eight ; breakfast is at eleven, 
and dinner at seven. The business hours of the gentlemen 
are thus largely confined to the afternoon, and they return 
home sufficiently early to get thoroughly rested, dress for 
dinner, and of course take a glass of bitters and smoke a 
cigarette. 

You will discover that the adults of the family — the 
rising generation — have been educated in either New 
York or Paris, and have travelled extensively in both the 
United States and Europe, if not also in India and China, 
and possibly around the world. They will be very likely 
to speak English and French in addition to their vernacu¬ 
lar. The ladies you will find dressed richly and tastefully, 
in European fashion, if not in the latest of French styles. 
They will receive you with a quiet and graceful dignity, 
combined with bright conversational powers and a display 
of great amiability. The gentlemen will be sure to try to 
make you feel at home, give you a good cigar, and ask 
your opinion of the bewitching sehoritas. In brief, the 
hospitality one meets in Lima is of a very bountiful and 
agreeable character, and life in the Peruvian capital is most 
delightful. 

While one sees in the streets and other public places of 
Lima more hags and homely women, both young and old, 
than in most other cities of the world, yet there are very 
frequently to be met young girls of the most delicate, refined, 
and ravishing beauty. As with the Quito belles, so with 
those of Lima, their chief beauty is to be found in their 
eyes, which are truly wondrous. A whole chapter might 




GLIMPSES OF LIMA AND THE PERUVIANS. l8l 

be devoted to them. They are uniformly of a coal-like 
blackness, lambent though soft. They do not flash, but 
burn with steadfastness, as though their flame would never, 
never die. It is an adjunct of beauty quite unknown to 
other nations, and but slightly approached even in Southern 
Spain. 



A Peruvian Belle. 


Like the aristocratic ladies of Quito, those of Lima have 
small and beautiful hands and feet. Their carriage is per¬ 
fect grace, their manner the acme of courtesy and good 
nature. They are, however, born coquettes, quite conscious 
of their charms, and not unwilling to exact from men the 
meed of admiration. They are eminently capable of mak¬ 
ing a crusty old bachelor see the error of his ways, from 


82 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


whichever hemisphere he may happen to hail. They 
unflinchingly return your gaze of curiosity or admiration. 
They will even acknowledge the bow of a susceptible 
foreigner, but in order to know them one must not only be 
fortified with introductions of the most irreproachable 
character, but must also submit to the supervision and 
constant presence of mother, aunt, married sister, or friend. ] 
No such thing is known as a visit to a Lima young lady I 

without the perpetual attendance of one of these, or a | 

duenna — that is, a governess ; and though some of these ! 
attendants are not unsusceptible to flattery, they never | 
relax their guard. i 

A bad custom to which I must allude, is that of heavily 
painting and powdering the face — a universal and by no 
means improving fashion. The dress usually is sombre j 
black, the mantilla being worn only on the head, with a 
narrow fringe of lace which is drawn down over the fore¬ 
head to the eyes. If the wearer is not pretty, this lace is 
apt to be so arranged as to quite conceal the features, thus 
giving one’s imagination the benefit of a generous doubt. 
The young ladies have a pretty and noticeable custom of 
greeting their female friends in the street and elsewhere 
by putting their arms around each other and imprinting a 
kiss upon each cheek. 

In their homes they are not generally good housekeepers, 
but given to gossip and novel-reading. They smoke 
cigarettes, but do not usually drink wine. They have 
natural talents of a high order, and are intelligent, if not 
always deeply educated. They play and sing, embroider, 
and draw well. They go to mass every morning. 

In one of the stores I purchased a fair series of Lima 
views, inclosed in a good imitation of a silver dollar. This 





GLIMPSES OF LIMA AND THE PERUVIANS. 


183 


at one end, with characteristic Peruvian gallantry, is dedi¬ 
cated to the “ Senoritas Limenas.” At the other end it 



A Lima Lady in her Manta. 

modestly affirms that Lima is the queen of the Pacific 
noted for its climate and’the beauty of its women.” 






184 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


I feel in duty bound to subscribe to the last statement, 
but as regards the climate, I must withhold such a ready 
endorsement. I saw the sun but once in ten days, and 
then only for a few hours. The days were damp and raw, 
the nights misty and drizzly, without any actual rainfall, 
but with a dew of such density and quantity that the 
streets for half the day were very muddy and slippery. 
And just such weather as this, I was informed by an old 
resident, you will find here for five months of the year, 
while the remainder will be very hot and dry. Still the 
climate, though a most depressing one — at least in winter 
— is said to be fairly healthy. 

Peru, though at present nearly ruined by its disastrous 
war with Chili, still has vast mineral and agricultural 
wealth ; and its guano, though exhausted in some places, 
abounds in others. With a good, stable government, and 
a united people, it might yet be a prosperous country, but 
there seems to be too little honor among its public men. 
Instead of endeavoring to keep faith with their creditors, 
they repudiate the just claims of foreigners, whom they 
now owe the immense sum of ^160,000,000 of American 
money. Instead of being ambitious to serve their country 
patriotically, most seem intent only upon robbing her. 
The party in power strive only to keep there, and to make 
what money they may while there. The party out of 
power busy themselves in fomenting the revolutions of 
which we continually hear, hoping thereby to effect a 
change of administration, which shall put them in position 
to plunder the people, and thus rapidly enrich themselves 
and their friends. 







VALPARAISO. 


185 


VALPARAISO.! 


After a voyage of a week, including frequent, though 
brief halts, early one morning Valparaiso was sighted, and 
as the steamer drew in towards the roadstead or semi¬ 
circular harbor, I was strongly reminded of the appearance 
of the “Golden Gate” of San Francisco, save that in Cali¬ 
fornia the hills are brown and barren, while here they are 
covered with grass and various grains. The bright living 
green was a very welcome sight after so much desolation 
and death as all the northward coast presents. 

The aspect of Valparaiso from the sea is very remarkable. 
One would think a more inconvenient site was nowhere 
to be found. Rome was built, so the historians tell us, 
upon seven hills, but Valparaiso is built upon twenty, and 
so steep are most of them that staircases are necessary to 
get from one part to another, and in one instance even a 
vertical railway has to be employed. The harbor of Val¬ 
paraiso is of a horseshoe shape, open to the north, but 
well protected on the southwest. It is unfortunate that it 
should be so exposed on the north, for occasionally northern 
gales are so heavy that the vessels have to slip their cables 
and put to sea. The entire harbor is filled with sail and 
steam craft of every description, as we enter and anchor 
in one hundred and fifty feet of water. We had just passed 
on the southern headland, two small open batteries, and 
could see another on the northerly point. Then on the 
eastward, and near the level of the water, there loomed 
several more. 


1 In and About South America. By Frank Vincent. D. Appleton and 
Company, New York, 1890. 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


186 

The appearance of Valparaiso may perhaps be likened 
to a vast amphitheatre, in which the ridges of the hills 
may be regarded as aisles. Its sloping position reminds 
one of Hong-Kong. Its spurs, terminating in bluffs at 
the water’s edge, recall Quebec. Owing to the presence 
of these spurs, the city is of course very irregularly built. 
In one place there are but two streets between a rocky 
bluff and the harbor, while in another there are ten. The 
greater part of the city is built upon a gently sloping plain, 
and the streets are laid out with square or oblong blocks. 

Adjoining the harbor is a very broad highway, upon 
which is situated a splendid row of business houses, built 
of brick, and three or four stories in height. At one 
extremity of this are the custom warehouses, forming an 
imposing pile. The most prominent objects seen from the 
deck of a steamer at anchor in the harbor are these custom, 
warehouses, a cemetery, the clock-tower of the Municipal 
Palace, and an enormous brewery, painted a flaring white, 
far off upon one of the hills. 

As I walked past the elegant bronze statue of Lord 
Cochrane — the Englishman who commanded the fleet of 
Chili from i8i8 to 1822 — with the post-office and the fire- 
engine houses to the left, and the Municipal Palace before 
me, and turned down a street to the right to the “ Gran 
Hotel Central,” with its long flight of marble steps, I was 
struck by the very civilized look of the famous Chilian sea¬ 
port. Indeed, it quite resembled a small French or German 
city. 

The people who were rushing about in the eagerness of 
business activity did not seem to be Chilians, but Germans, 
French, English, Americans. And when I came to enter 
some of the great foreign mercantile houses, extending 




VALPARAISO. 


187 

from street to street, and fitted with perfect modern 
appointments ; and when, at night, I walked through the 
long streets where most of the retail business is done, with 
brilliantly lighted shops filled with a variety of goods from 
every country — I could hardly believe myself in the 
southern hemisphere. It was only the sight of an occa¬ 
sional mantilla, or a peculiar cut of the beard, or perhaps 
a solitary poncho-clad figure urging his horse swiftly along, 
that dispelled my illusion. 

In the dining-room of the hotel the electric light was 
used, as well as in very many of the stores. In the streets 
is a “ Belgian ” pavement, and the sidewalks are smoothly 
and neatly flagged. The architecture of some of the build¬ 
ings is very fine, and there are several rich and elegant 
churches. The principal streets are threaded by tramways. 
The trams, or cars, are of two stories, as in Paris and some 
other European cities. But a Valparaiso conductor is not 
paralleled in any other city anywhere —for it is a woman. 
She is provided with a board-seat upon the rear platform, 
and performs, and very well, too, all the customary functions 
of the male conductor, save that of the caution to “ move 
up, please,” for here no more passengers are admitted than 
there are seats for. These female conductors wear a uni¬ 
form blue dress with a white apron and a man’s felt hat, 
and carry a leather change-bag. The fare is five cents for 
inside and two cents and a half for outside passengers. 

At the time of my visit to Chili a small steamer sailed 
for the famous island of Juan Fernandez, or Robinson 
Crusoe’s Island, which belongs to that country, and is sit¬ 
uated in the Pacific Ocean about four hundred miles nearly 
due west from Valparaiso. It has a few Chilian inhabitants 
and is the seat of a small German colony. The news- 


i88 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


papers of the city announced, with many flourishes, that a 
pleasure excursion was about to be made to Juan Fernan¬ 
dez, and that it would last six days, half of which time 
would be spent upon the island. The fare was placed at 
sixty dollars for first-class and thirty dollars for second- 
class passengers. The various attractions promised were 
the shooting of seals, fishing for cod, driving and shooting 
goats, lobster-fishing and last, and evidently least, visits to 
all the places of interest on the island. These included 
Robinson Crusoe’s lookout, three thousand feet above the 
ocean, with a commemorative bronze tablet set in the side 
of the hill by the officers of the Challenger Expedition ; 
Crusoe’s cave, and the beach where he was supposed to 
have been wrecked, or rather to have gone on shore by 
the memorable raft. The island is eighteen miles long and 
six broad ; it is for the most part rocky and barren. I was 
told that these excursions, a few of which occur every year, 
are quite popular, and that the steamers usually have a 
great crowd of passengers. 


OVERLAND ROUTES FROM CHILI TO THE 
ARGENTINE REPUBLIC.^ 

From Santiago I returned to Valparaiso and took steamer 
to Montevideo, Uruguay, via the Strait of Magellan and 
the Falkland Islands. I had at first proposed to myself to 
go from Santiago across the Andes, by the Uspallanta 
Pass, to Mendoza in the Argentine Republic, and thence by 

^ In and About South America. By Frank Vincent. D. Appleton and 
Company, New York, 1890. 


FROM CHILI TO THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 189 

rail, in four days, to the city of Buenos Ayres. The actual 
passage through the mountains is from the village of Santa 
Rosa, the terminus of the railway from Santiago. From 
here the distance to Mendoza is about 250 miles, and in 
summer the journey is only a pleasant mule-ride of six 
days; but in winter snow-storms are frequent, there are 
heavy rains and furious gales, and all travel ceases save 
that of the native couriers. Even these are frequently 
snowed up for days in the snow-huts by the roadside, and 
occasionally they succumb to the hardships of the trip and 
perish. 

As it was still the closed or bad season, I decided it was 
best for me to go to Montevideo and Buenos Ayres by sea, 
and I afterwards had great reason to congratulate myself 
on the choice. But I was not the less interested in learn¬ 
ing some particulars of the overland routes from Chili to 
the Argentine Republic. It appears that among very 
many that might be available, but six are frequently used. 
One of these, the Portillo Pass, the shortest, but one of the 
highest, was that crossed by the illustrious naturalist, Dar¬ 
win, in 1834. The Uspallanta, however, running between 
the two great peaks of Aconcagua and Tupungato, and 
nearly thirteen thousand feet above the sea-level, is the 
most traversed at the present day. During the whole of 
summer great numbers of cattle are driven over this route 
from the dreary pampas of the Argentine to the fruitful 
valleys of Chili. 

At this season mules are employed in the trans-Andean 
journey, but in winter it is said to be best to go on foot. 
Then shoes of raw leather are worn, as ordinary boots 
would burn the feet. To keep one warm at night the ex¬ 
tremely novel yet highly successful plan is adopted of 


190 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


taking along three or four dogs as sleeping partners. 
These are transformed to very active partners by day, 
when, as is necessary, they are provided with snow-shoes. 
For the human traveller, in addition to heavy winter cloth¬ 
ing, sheep-skin trousers, with the wool inside, of course, 
are used as a protection against frost-bite in wading 
through deep snow-drifts. The guides will carry a hun¬ 
dred pounds weight of baggage, and yet readily keep pace 
with the unladen traveller. 

On the Uspallanta route are good post-houses, which in 
addition to being comfortable, fill the position of country 
stores, with large assortments of necessaries. The snow- 
houses above mentioned are distributed at dangerous 
points on the route. They are really houses of refuge for 
exhausted or storm-bound travellers. They are of uniform 
structure, a simple hut, about fifteen feet square, and the 
same in height, with no windows and but one small door. 
No chimney being built, a fire used for both cooking and 
heating is made in the centre of the room upon the ground, 
and sends forth smoke which proves a distressing nuisance 
to the wayfarer, who has often to pass several days thus 
“Cabined, cribbed, confined.” 

It has been proposed to connect the towns of Santa 
Rosa and Mendoza by a railroad through the Uspallanta 
Pass, which would bring Buenos Ayres within twenty-nine 
hours of Valparaiso. A concession has actually been 
granted with this end in view, and surveys have been made 
and work begun. The estimated cost is ten million dollars. 
The engineering work, though severe, would not be nearly 
so difficult as that upon either the Oroya or Arequipa-Puno 
roads of Peru. The Uspallanta road would cross the Cor¬ 
dillera at the summit of an elevation of 10,568 feet, through 



FROM CHILI TO THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. IQI 

a tunnel which would have to be two miles in length. The 
steepest incline would be three and one-half per cent, and 
the minimum curve would have a radius of 550 feet. The 
total distance from Valparaiso to Buenos Ayres by this 
route would be 870 miles. This railroad is not yet com¬ 
pleted, but a telegraph line has recently been finished 
between the two capitals. It is an iron-pole line, in con¬ 
nection with forty miles of cable, laid under the perpetual 
snows of the Andes, and will insure communication 
between Buenos Ayres and London, via Galveston, in a 
little over an hour. 

In many respects Chili is the most vigorous and power¬ 
ful of the South American nations. During the last ten 
years her revenues and foreign trade have each more than 
doubled. She has shown good sense in cultivating peace, 
rather than keeping up the war spirit, though she may 
take just pride in the prowess of her arms. With Peru 
and Bolivia both against her, this enterprising republic suc¬ 
ceeded in inflicting on the former one of the most complete 
• disasters, both by land and sea, recorded in recent warfare. 

She annihilated the really strong navy of Peru, carried 
her victorious army into Lima itself, broke the Peruvian 
army into fragments, until only a few fugitive guerillas 
were left, and exacted a war indemnity, the cession of 
territory, and the control of the disputed guano and nitrate 
districts, as conditions of peace. Chili must of necessity 
ultimately become an industrial nation, and the completion 
of the trans-Andes railway, and foreign immigration, will 
greatly contribute to this end. 


192 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


PATAGONIAN INDIANS.^ 

After breakfast the horses were saddled, and taking * 
some sugar, tobacco, and other articles for bartering pur- j 
poses, we set out for the Indian camp. We had not gone | 
far when we saw a rider coming slowly towards us, and in ! 
a few minutes we found ourselves in the presence of a 
real Patagonian Indian. We reined in our horses, when he 
got close to us, to have a good look at him, and he doing 
the same, for a few minutes we stared at him to our 
heart’s content, receiving in return as minute and careful 
a scrutiny from him. Whatever he may have thought of 
us, we thought him a singularly unprepossessing object, 
and, for the sake of his race, we hoped an unfavorable 
specimen of it. His dirty brown face, of which the prin¬ 
cipal feature was a pair of sharp black eyes, was half-hidden 
by tangled masses of unkempt hair, held together by a 
handkerchief tied over his forehead, and his burly body was 
enveloped in a greasy guanaco-capa, considerably the worse 
for wear. His feet were bare, but one of his heels was 
armed with a little wooden spur, of curious and ingenious 
handiwork. Having completed his survey of our persons, 
he galloped away, and glad to find some virtue in him, 
we were able to admire the easy grace with which he 
sat his well-bred little horse, which, though considerably 
below his weight, was doubtless able to do his master good 
service. 

Continuing our way, we presently observed several 

1 Across Patagonia. By Lady Florence Dixie. R. Worthington, New 
York, 1881. 




PATAGONIAN INDIANS. 


193 


mounted Indians, sitting motionless on their horses, like 
sentries, on the summit of a high ridge ahead of us, evi¬ 
dently watching our movements. At our approach they 
disappeared over the ridge, on the other side of which lay 
their camping-ground. Cantering forward, we soon came 
in sight of the entire Indian camp, which was pitched in a 
broad valley-plain, flanked on either side by steep bluffs, 
and with a little stream flowing down its centre. There 
were about a dozen big hide tents, in front of which stood 
crowds of men and women watching our approach with 
lazy curiosity. 

On our arrival in the camp we were soon encircled by 
a curious crowd, some of whose number gazed at us with 
stolid gravity, whilst others laughed and gesticulated as 
they discussed our appearance in their harsh guttural lan¬ 
guage, with a vivacious manner which was quite at vari¬ 
ance with the received traditions of the solemn bent of the 
Indian mind. 

Our accoutrements and clothes seemed to excite great 
interest, my riding-boots in particular being objects of 
attentive examination, and apparently of much serious 
speculation. At first they were content to observe them 
from a distance, but presently a little boy was delegated 
by the elders to advance and give them a closer inspec¬ 
tion. This he proceeded to do, coming towards me with 
great caution, and when near enough, he stretched out his 
hand and touched the boots gently with the tips of his 
fingers. This exploit was greeted with roars of laughter 
and ejaculations, and emboldened by its success, many 
now ventured to follow his example, some enterprising 
spirits extending their researches to the texture of my 
ulster, and one even going so far as to take my hand in 


o 


194 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


his, whilst subjecting a little bracelet I wore to a profound 
and exhaustive scrutiny. 

Whilst they were thus occupied I had leisure to observe 
their general appearance. I was not struck so much by 
their height as by their extraordinary development of 
chest and muscle. As regards their stature, I do not 
think the average height of the men exceeded six feet, 
and as my husband stands six feet two inches, I had 
a favorable opportunity for forming an accurate estimate. 
One or two there were, certainly, who towered far above 
him, but these were exceptions. The women were mostly 
of the ordinary height, though I noticed one who must I 
have been quite six feet, if not more. j 

The features of the pure-bred Tehuelche are extremely 
regular, and by no means unpleasant to look at. The 
nose is generally aquiline, the mouth well shaped and 
beautified by the whitest of teeth, the expression of the 
eye is intelligent, and the form of the whole head affords 
a favorable index of their mental capabilities. These re¬ 
marks do not apply to the Tehuelches in whose veins 
there is a mixture of Araucanian or Fuegian blood. The 
flat noses, oblique eyes, and badly proportioned figures 
of the latter make them most repulsive objects, and they 
are as different from a pure-bred Tehuelche in every 
respect as “ Wheel-of-Fortune ” from an ordinary cart¬ 
horse. Their hair is long and coarse, and is worn parted 
in the middle, being prevented from falling over their faces 
by means of a handkerchief, or fillet of some kind, tied 
round the forehead. They have naturally little hair on 
the face, and such growth as may appear is carefully erad¬ 
icated, a painful operation, which may extend even to their 
eyebrows. Their dress is simple and consists of a piece 



PATAGONIAN INDIANS. 


195 


of cloth round the loins, and the indispensable guanaco- 
capa, which is hung loosely over the shoulders and held 
round the body by the hand, though it would obviously 
seem more convenient to have it secured round the waist 
with a belt of some kind. 

The women dress like the men except as regards the 
cloth round the loins, instead of which they wear a loose 
kind of gown beneath the capa, which they fasten at the 
neck with a silver brooch or pin. The children are 
allowed to run about naked until they are five or six 
years old, and are then dressed like their elders. 

Partly for ornament, partly also as a means of protection 
against the wind, a great many Indians paint their faces; 
their favorite color, as far as I could see, being red, though 
one or two I observed had given the preference to a mix¬ 
ture of that color with black, a very diabolical appearance 
being the result of this combination. 

The Tehuelches are a race that is fast approaching ex¬ 
tinction, and even at present it scarcely numbers eight 
hundred souls. They lead a rambling nomadic existence, 
shifting their camping-places from one region to another, 
whenever the game in their vicinity gets shy or scarce. 
It is fortunate for them that the immense numbers of 
guanaco and ostriches make it an easy matter for them to 
find subsistence, as they are extremely lazy, and, plentiful 
as game is around them, often pass two or three days 
without food rather than incur the very slight exertion 
attendant on a day’s hunting. 

But it is only the men who are cursed or blessed with 
this indolent spirit. The women are indefatigably indus¬ 
trious. All the work of Tehuelche existence is done by 
them except hunting. When not employed in ordinary 




196 


THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 


household work they busy themselves in making guanaco- 
capas, weaving gay-colored garters and fillets for the hair, 
working silver ornaments, and so forth. Not one of their 
least arduous tasks is that of collecting firewood, which, 
always a scarce article, becomes doubly hard to find except 
by going great distances, when they camp long in one 
place. 

But though treated thus unfairly as. regards the division 
of labor, the women can by no means complain of want of 
devotion to them on the part of the men. Marriages are 
matters of great solemnity with them, and the tie is strictly 
kept. Husband and wife show great affection for one 
another and both agree in extravagant love of their off¬ 
spring, which they pet and spoil to their heart’s content. 





Part II. 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT 


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EDUCATION IN RUSSIA.^ 


I SAID to one of the leading men of Russia, a man who 
is loyal to the Czar, and the “ Administrative System ” 
as they call the autocracy, as a less rasping expression, I 
suppose : “ Why has your government spent so much for 
public libraries ; for art galleries and pictures to fill them ; 
for academies of science, schools and museums of miner¬ 
als, schools and museums for the promotion of agriculture 
and other useful arts ; for theatres and opera houses, and 
has utterly failed to provide means for the education of 
the young, for instruction in the rudimentary branches of 
education? There is a splendid university here,” I said, 
“ but few common schools.” 

He smiled and said, “ I am used to answering that ques¬ 
tion. Everybody from your country asks it, and most of 
the strangers who come here from England and Germany. 
The difficulty is that you do not comprehend our ‘ Admin¬ 
istrative System.’ There are two classes of people in 
Russia — the upper class and the lower class, the edu¬ 
cated and the ignorant, the rich and the poor. The gov¬ 
ernment provides instruction for the upper classes, and 
amusement for the lower classes. The sons and daugh¬ 
ters of the nobles must be educated, but the children of 
the lower classes we prefer to remain in ignorance. The 
less they know the better. A mujik is seldom a Nihilist.” 

1 The Land of the Nihilist. By William Eleroy Curtis. Belford, Clarke 
and Company, Chicago, 1888. 


199 


200 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


“Then from what class do the Nihilists come.?” 

“ From the families of the upper classes who have felt 
the iron heel of the Administrative System, and resist it ; 
from the families of the lower classes, who in spite of the 
system, have got a little learning at home or abroad; and 
most of all from the students in the universities,” was the 
reply. 

The children of the upper classes, I find, are educated 
by tutors and governesses till they are sufficiently advanced 
to enter the University. There is scarcely a family of 
wealth or position in Russia which does not have at least 
one teacher in the household, and in many families there 
are both English and French governesses or tutors. There 
is scarcely a child of ten years in any of the noble families 
who cannot read and speak English, French, and German 
fluently. The Russians are the most accomplished lin¬ 
guists in the world. 

Coming from Moscow to Vienna we had as fellow pas¬ 
sengers in our compartment a lady from Minsk, one of the 
smaller cities of the Empire, with a beautiful little girl 
nine years old. Their nationality was evident, and we 
commented upon them in English, as travellers often fool¬ 
ishly do, thinking that they are not understood. I made 
some remark about the little girl, fortunately a compli¬ 
mentary one, when she looked up in a roguish way, and in as 
good English as my own, remarked, “ I understand every¬ 
thing you say,” and I blessed the child for her frankness 
in preserving me from possible mortification. 

They proved to be not only agreeable, but very accom¬ 
plished people. Neither the mother nor the child had ever 
been outside of Russia, but both spoke English, French, 
and German as well as their own language, and the mother 



EDUCATION IN RUSSIA. 


201 


spoke Polish also, having lived on the borders of Poland. 
The child was one of the most beautiful creatures I ever 
saw. She had always had a German nurse, from whom 
she learned that language, then an English governess, and 
finally a French maid, and could converse in one tongue 
as readily as in the other. 

Nor is this an exceptional case. It is a common one, 
too common to cause remark among the people. I was 
telling of the incident to a Russian gentleman afterward, 
and he remarked sententiously : “ All my children can do 
the same. My youngest, seven years old, can speak three 
languages, and has had a governess from England since 
she could talk. She cannot read English or French but 
speaks both languages as well as natives.” 

Although her universities are superior, Russia has the 
most defective and the most limited educational system of 
any of the great nations. The mass of the people cannot 
read or write their own names, and it is the policy of the 
government not to permit them to do so. It was only in 
June, 1887, that the minister of education issued a decree 
forbidding the education of the children of peasants, 
because, as he explained truthfully, it bred discontent. A 
little learning is a dangerous thing, particularly in Russia. 
Ignorance, also, is bliss throughout the great Empire. 


202 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


PASSPORTS AND THE RUSSIAN CUSTOM 
HOUSES.i 

It requires a passport to get into the Czar’s dominions, 
and it requires a passport to get out. Every resident of 
the country, foreigner or native, must have his passport 
ready to be produced at any moment it may be called for, 
and that is frequently. It is well to have the document 
ready, as the police officials are busy men, not blessed 
with an abundance of patience, and often mistake the 
meaning of delay. I heard of one man who mislaid his 
passport, and not being able to produce it when called for, 
was sent to prison instantly. His wife discovered the 
document a few hours after the arrest was made, and went 
to police headquarters at once. The officials were so busy 
that she did not get a hearing for a week or ten days, and 
they considered it best for the husband to remain in jail a 
month or so to punish him for his carelessness, and the 
trouble he had caused them. 

There is no other power on earth, so omnipotent, so 
omniscient, and so remorseless as the Russian police. I 
shall have more to say about them in other chapters, but 
stop here to advise every traveller bound for Russia, of 
whatever age, sex, or nationality, to take a passport, properly . 
endorsed by the Representative of the Russian Govern¬ 
ment at New York or Washington. It will do no harm, 
and it may be useful to have the endorsement of both, for 

^ The Land of the Nihilist. By William Eleroy Curtis. Belford, 
Clarke and Company, Chicago, 1888. 


PASSPORTS AND THE RUSSIAN CUSTOM HOUSES. 203 

the Russian police are of an inquiring frame of mind, and 
lack confidence in human virtue. 

With a passport properly vised, a strict obedience to all 
the regulations, which are plain and unmistakable, a discrete 
tongue, and a decent behavior, one can be as safe and com¬ 
fortable as in any country on the globe, and see and enjoy 
much that cannot be seen and enjoyed elsewhere. There 
are few picturesque landscapes and no mountains, but the 
people and the palaces, the churches and the native 
customs, will revivify the most blase traveller, and the 
gayeties of both the summer and winter seasons offer a 
treat to those who have exhausted Paris and other great 
cities of the world. 

There need be no annoyance from the tyranny constantly 
exercised over both citizens and strangers. There need be 
no test of patience. It is only necessary to submit, and to 
do it as cheerfully and politely as possible. A visitor can 
see nothing without a passport and police surveillance. 
He may not look at a picture, or a curiosity in any of the 
museums, without having gendarmes peering over his 
shoulders. If he is an artist he must obtain the permis¬ 
sion of the police to make sketches, and to go anywhere 
he must secure a pass. But all these obstacles are easily 
overcome ; and all the objects of interest can be thoroughly 
enjoyed by an observance of the requirements, and a dis¬ 
position to acknowledge the sovereignty of the police. 
Submission is all that is required, and the rigid rules have 
been made necessary by nihilism and dynamite. 

Each citizen must have his permit to live in the country. 
These permits are issued annually upon the payment of a 
fee. If he wants to leave the country, or go from one 
town to another, he must notify the police, for that branch 


204 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


of the government must know where each inhabitant of 
the vast Empire sleeps every night. In the provinces the 
rigid surveillance is relaxed ; but at St. Petersburg, Mos¬ 
cow, and other places visited by tourists, there is a con¬ 
stant contact between the sovereign and the subject that 
is disagreeable to both. The police grant permission to 
go and to come readily. There is no interference with 
travel or with trade. Submission ; submission ; that is all. 
No one can get a ticket at a railway station or on a steam¬ 
boat without showing a permit to leave. No hotel will 
entertain a guest till he shows his passport. One cannot 
go anywhere or do anything without the consent of the 
authorities, but it is easily obtained, and costs only forty 
copecks for the stamp that appears upon the document — 
about fifteen cents. 

I had heard many tales about the tyranny of the Russian 
police, told principally by Englishmen. I heard about an 
American who attempted to do in St. Petersburg as he did 
in Cincinnati, and got into a cell from which the Ameri¬ 
can Minister had to try hard and long before he could 
extricate him. I had heard of the brutality of the customs 
officers, too; of trunks being confiscated because they 
contained books ; of clothing being ruined ; of passengers 
detained for hours and days in dirty stations because they 
could not speak the Russian language sufficiently to give 
an account of themselves; and numerous other stories 
calculated to excite a profound dread and anxiety to reach 
and cross the border as soon as possible and have the 
ordeal over with. 

But the best advice I got out of a thousand words of 
caution and instruction was to advertise myself conspicu¬ 
ously and frequently as a citizen of the United States, a 


PASSPORTS AND THE RUSSIAN CUSTOM HOUSES. 205 

country most different of all on earth from that which I 
was about to visit, but for which the Czar and the Nihilist, 
and all the casts and classes between the two extremes, 
have an abiding affection. It is true that Russia was 
warmly attached to the American colonies when they 
rebelled and secured their independence ; it is true also 
that during the late war her sympathies were openly 
manifested on the side of the North ; it is true, as well, 
that the emancipation of her serfs preceded the emancipa¬ 
tion of our slaves by four years, and that the two nations 
have always been friendly; but just why the typical 
autocracy should have such a feeling of friendliness for 
the typical democracy, is something no fellow can find 
out. 

Americans in Russia are received with open arms. They 
suffer less annoyance at the Custom Houses, and at every 
other point where they come in contact with the authorities, 
than the people of any other country. They are treated 
infinitely better than the Russians treat their own country¬ 
men. I was told by one who had preceded me that the 
letters “U. S. A.” on my trunk would be as good as the 
inspector’s chalk mark, and it was a good deal so. 

It was midnight when they hustled us out of the cars at 
Wirballen, the Custom House station on the Russian 
frontier, and led us into a dimly lighted room, with a pen 
in the centre where our baggage had already been placed. 
The customs officials do not trouble the traveller to assist 
them in the examination of his luggage, but they coolly 
call for his keys, ask him to point out his trunk, and then 
go through it as if they were hunting for something they 
wanted very badly. At least that was the rule, and most 
of the passengers had the distressing sensation of seeing 



206 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


their clothing and valuables tumbled rudely and indiscrim¬ 
inately upon the floor. Some of them, and ladies only, 
were allowed to repack their trunks, but that was the 
exception. The inspectors generally took the trouble to 
repack them themselves, and they did it in a way that 
excited indignation. 

The first act on the programme was to array the pas¬ 
sengers around the pen like a flock of sheep waiting to be 
fed, and then call for their passports, which were carried 
into the inner room by an officer, while we awaited the 
result of the inspection. In about five minutes an in¬ 
spector came out of the door with a passport in his hand and 
called the name of him who owned it. I thought at first 
they had caught a Nihilist, but it turned out to be other¬ 
wise, as the man whose name was announced only came 
forward to deliver up his keys and point out the piece 
of baggage in the pen which belonged to him. 

And so the whole list of passengers was called over one 
at a time, at intervals of a few seconds or a few minutes, 
my turn coming near the last. Fortunately I got an in¬ 
spector who was a gentleman and could talk English. 
After I pointed out my trunks and handed him the keys, I 
had to enter the pen to show him how to open them, as 
the locks were rather peculiar. 

“ Have you any cigars ? ” he asked. 

“Yes,” I replied; “some first-rate ones in this bag,” 
and pulling out a part of a box asked him to help himself. 

He took one, and, being urged, a handful. Then he 
asked if I had any liquors. I told him I had none, and did 
not think there was anything dutiable in my baggage. I 
explained my nationality, and my purpose in visiting Rus¬ 
sia, with a few compliments for himself and his country 


PASSPORTS AND THE RUSSIAN CUSTOM HOUSES. 20 / 

interlarded. Opening one of the trunks he found a num¬ 
ber of books in the top tray. 

What are these ? ” he asked. 

“Nothing but novels and guide-books.” 

“But I’ll have to take them to the chief inspector,” he 
said, and he did, being absent about fifteen minutes. 
When he returned he remarked, 

“ I guess you are all right,” tossed the books into the 
trunk, shut the lid, and chalked the rest of the luggage 
without looking at it. 

But most of the passengers did not fare so well. One 
had a lot of books confiscated, and some manuscript which 
he claimed related to business matters, but the gendarme 
had a notion there was something political about it. 
Another, a Russian lady, was detained till the next train 
because of some informality in her passport, while several 
suffered much annoyance and distress by having their 
baggage dumped on the floor, and poked over as if it were 
a lot of rags that required disinfecting. Several had cigars 
and liquors confiscated, small quantities to be sure, but it 
was an annoyance, caused by their desire to deceive the 
inspectors. I noticed that people who admitted they had 
liquors and tobacco, and produced them at once, were not 
troubled ; only those who tried to hide the stuff. As I had 
been told would be the case, the Englishmen, of whom 
there were several on the train, were as a rule treated 
badly, and with evident malice. 


2 o8 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


NIHILISM.I 

The word Nihilism has lost its meaning. At least it 
does not mean now what it once did. The word was first 
used by St. Augustine in his writings, and was invented 
to describe a policy that meant the destruction of kings. 
Ivan Tourguenieff, the novelist, borrowed the term to 
baptize the radical party of Russia, and it has stuck to 
them ever since. It is now applied to all classes who 
oppose the government, from the insane fanatic who 
throws the bomb at the Czar, to the statesman who sees 
the evils of the present system and conscientiously warns 
the government that it cannot always exist as it is. 

The whole body of people in Russia who are opposed 
to the present condition of the Empire are Nihilists, and 
they are wrongly named. This body is divided into sev¬ 
eral classes or parties. First, there are the Constitution¬ 
alists, reasoning and loyal men, and they are many — the 
late Czar himself was one of them — who believe that the 
proper cure for the evils that exist in Russia is the adop¬ 
tion of a constitution, a change from an absolute despot¬ 
ism to a liberal monarchy, like Germany or England. They 
believe that this is the manifest destiny of Russia, that the 
spirit of the age requires it, and that it sooner or later must 
come. They differ widely as to the proper method to bring 
about what they all desire. The late Czar, had he been 
allowed to live a few months longer, would have given 
the people just this thing. A proclamation calling for 

1 The Land of the Nihilist. By William Eleroy Curtis. Belford, Clarke 
and Company, Chicago, 1888. 


NIHILISM. 


209 


the election of a “consultative assembly” lay unsigned on 
his table when he died. Therefore his death was the more 
lamented. The present Czar is opposed to his father’s 
plan. He might have felt differently had the last bomb 
not been thrown. 

Next comes the liberal party, the Republicans. Their 
platform demands : — 

1. A general amnesty for all political offenders who 
have committed no crime but resistance and remonstrance 
to the present state of affairs. 

2. Freedom of speech. 

3. Freedom of the press. 

4. Freedom of public meeting and public discussion of 
political affairs, such as exists in England. 

5. The right of petition to the Czar, and the considera¬ 
tion of petitions by him. 

6. The abolition of the secret police, and of star-cham¬ 
ber trials, and the privilege of meeting accusers face to 
face. 

7. Open trials for all offenders by juries subject to the 
challenge of the accused. 

8. The election of a law-making body by the people, 
with free electoral agitation, and a free ballot. 

In other words, the liberal party want a condition of 
political affairs similar to that which exists in Great 
Britain. It is difficult to learn or even estimate the ex¬ 
tent of this party. The Liberal leaders will tell you 
that if these questions were submitted to the people they 
would be almost unanimously adopted, that scarcely any 
one wants the present despotism to continue; but to advo¬ 
cate such measures is considered a crime that not less than 
fifteen years in the government mines of Siberia will atone 

p 




210 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


for, and that means a slow death, with the most intense j 
suffering and privation. It is worse than a similar period 
spent in the prisons of the United States. 

The third political element is known as the Radical , 
party, who are Revolutionists. They demand the same 
liberties asked for by the Liberals, but they advocate the 
overthrow of the present government by force. They have 
their propagandists all over the Empire, in every city and 
village, in every school and factory, seeking to arouse the 
people to violence. Occasionally insurrections occur, but 
the masses are ignorant and lethargic, are without arms 
or ammunition, and cannot obtain them, for the sale of 
weapons is a government monopoly, and the permission 
of the police is necessary to own a gun. The crime of 
being a Radical, when detected, is punished by banish- j 
ment to Siberia or imprisonment in a dungeon for life ; I 
often by death on the gallows. 

The Nihilists proper, or the Terrorists, as they are 
designated in Russia, are Radicals who believe in imme¬ 
diate action, who hit at a head when they see it, and 
resist police authority with a revolver or a bomb. The 
Terrorists believe in blowing up the palaces and the gov¬ 
ernment buildings with dynamite. They advocate the as¬ 
sassination of the Czar and his officials, the revenging of 
wrongs with wrongs, the murder of officials who pursue 
them ; and in their secret associations they try and con¬ 
demn to death the police, the ministers, and the Czar him¬ 
self, for crimes committed against the people. A Radical 
who has been accused, sentenced, and escapes is usually 
a Terrorist. Liberals become such after they have suf¬ 
fered from the injustice of the government. The Terror¬ 
ist party is composed in a large part of wronged men. 


NIHILISM. 


211 


suffering for vengeance, and the friends of those who have 
been condemned for opinion’s sake; while the remainder 
are wild students and fanatics who believe, or pretend to 
believe, that all law is oppression. 

These are the Nihilists proper. They are without ex¬ 
ception against all laws, and advocate the destruction of the 
State. One cannot find a Nihilist who believes in any- 

I thing. They are Atheists, and deny Divine as well as 
human authority. They are all Free-lovers, and want the 
i| marriage relation abolished. They are Communists, So¬ 
il cialists, and want a common division of property every 
I Saturday night, and oftener if necessary. They believe 
that the accumulation of money is a crime, and that the 
I incomes of all men should be equal. They would destroy 
I the Church, the home, and change all the conditions of 
civilized existence. In other words they are lunatics, 
fitted for nothing but destruction and murder. Their 
creed is confined to a single word — Annihilation. 

The number of the Terrorist party in Russia is very 
small. The police do not permit them to exist there. A 
few may be found in every city, and fugitives are scattered 
through the small towns, living like outlaws on forged or 
stolen passports. They are hunted down like mad dogs, 
and are discovered as certainly as they show their inten¬ 
tions. They sometimes hold meetings in secluded places, 
but the police system is so thorough that they cannot 
assemble often without detection. In Geneva and Zurich, 
Switzerland, the most of them are gathered; exiles who 
dare not show their faces at home, or cross the borders of 
a State with which Russia has an extradition treaty. Some 
of them are in London and some in New York. They are 
watched in all these places. The Russian police keep 



212 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


them constantly under surveillance wherever they go, and 
the moment they reach a country where they may be ar¬ 
rested, they are sent to prison. 


NIZHNI NOVGOROD.! 

To a traveller visiting Nizhni Novgorod for the first time 
there is something surprising, and almost startling, in the 
appearance of what he supposes to be the city, and in the 
scene presented to him as he emerges from the railway 
station and walks away from the low bank of the Oka 
River in the direction of the Volga. The clean, well-paved 
streets ; the long rows of substantial buildings; the spa¬ 
cious boulevard, shaded by leafy birches and poplars ; the 
canal, spanned at intervals by graceful bridges; the pic¬ 
turesque tower of the water-works ; the enormous cathe¬ 
dral of Alexander Nevski; the Bourse ; the theatres ; the 
hotels; the market-places — all seem to indicate a great 
populous centre of life and commercial activity; but of 
living inhabitants there is not a sign. 

Grass and weeds are growing in the middle of the empty 
streets and in the chinks of the travel-worn sidewalks ; 
birds are singing fearlessly in the trees that shade the 
lonely and deserted boulevard; the countless shops and 
warehouses are all closed, barred, and padlocked ; the bells 
are silent in the gilded belfries of the churches; and the 
astonished stranger may perhaps wander for a mile between 
solid blocks of buildings without seeing an open door, a 
vehicle, or a single human being. 

The city appears to have been stricken by a pestilence 

1 Century for May, 1888. By George Kennan. 



NIZHNI NOVGOROD. 213 

and deserted. If the newcomer remembers for what 
Nizhni Novgorod is celebrated, he is not long, of course, 
in coming to the conclusion that he is on the site of the 
famous fair ; but the first realization of the fact that the 
fair is in itself a separate and independent city, and a city 
which during nine months of every year stands empty and 
deserted, comes to him with the shock of a great sur¬ 
prise. 

The fair-city of Nizhni Novgorod is situated on a low 
peninsula between the rivers Oka and Volga just above 
their junction, very much as New York City is situated 
on Manhattan Island between East River and the Hudson. 
In geographical position it bears the same relation to the 
old town of Nizhni Novgorod that New York would bear 
to Jersey City, if the latter were elevated on a steep, ter¬ 
raced bluff four hundred feet above the level of the 
Hudson. 

The Russian fair-city, however, differs from New York 
City in that it is a mere temporary market — a huge com¬ 
mercial caravansary where 500,000 traders assemble every 
year to buy and to sell commodities. In September it has 
frequently a population of more than 100,000 souls, and con¬ 
tains merchandise valued at ^75,000,000 ; while in January, 
February, or March, all of its inhabitants might be fed and 
sheltered in the smallest of its hotels, and all of its goods 
might be put into a single one of its innumerable shops. 
Its life, therefore, is a sort of intermittent commercial 
fever, in which an annual paroxysm of intense and unnatural 
activity is followed by a long interval of torpor and stagna¬ 
tion. 

It seems almost incredible at first that a city of such 
magnitude — a city which contains churches, mosques. 


214 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


theatres, markets, banks, hotels, a merchants’ exchange, 
and nearly 7000 shops and inhabitable buildings, should 
have so ephemeral a life, and should be so completely 
abandoned every year after it has served the purpose 
for which it was created. 

When I saw this unique city for the first time, on 
a clear, frosty night in January, 1868, it presented an ex¬ 
traordinary picture of loneliness and desolation. The 
moonlight streamed down into its long empty streets, 
where the unbroken snow lay two feet deep upon the side¬ 
walks ; it touched with silver the white walls and swelling 
domes of the old fair-cathedral, from whose towers there 
came no clangor of bells ; it sparkled on great snowdrifts 
heaped up against the doors of the empty houses, and 
poured a flood of pale light over thousands of snow- 
covered roofs; but it did not reveal anywhere a sign of 
a human being. The city seemed to be not only uninhab¬ 
ited, but wholly abandoned to the arctic spirits of solitude 
and frost. 

When I saw it next, at the height of the annual fair in 
the autumn of 1876, it was so changed as to be almost 
unrecognizable. It was then surrounded by a great forest 
of shipping ; its hot, dusty atmosphere thrilled with the 
incessant whistling of steamers ; merchandise to the value 
of 125,000,000 rubles lay on its shores, or was packed 
into its 6000 shops; every building within its limits was 
crowded; 60,000 people were crossing every day the pon¬ 
toon bridge which connected it with the old town ; a mil¬ 
itary band was playing airs from Offenbach’s operas on 
the great boulevard in front of the governor’s house ; and 
through all the streets of the reanimated and reawakened 
city poured a great tumultuous flood of human life. 


SCOTIA’S FAIR CAPITAL. 


215 


I did not see the fair-city again until June, 1885, when 
I found it almost as completely deserted as on the occasion 
of my first visit, but in other ways greatly changed and 
improved. Substantial brick buildings had taken the 
place of the long rows of inflammable wooden shops and 
sheds ; the streets in many parts of the city had been 
neatly paved ; the number of stores and warehouses had 
largely increased ; and the lower end of the peninsula had 
been improved and dignified by the erection of the great 
Alexander Nevski cathedral. 


SCOTIA’S FAIR CAPITAL.i 

Edinburgh once seen is never forgotten. Other cities 
are seen and forgotten. Busy Glasgow will be blotted out 
by busier Liverpool; The Hague will fade away at the 
sight of Venice ; Genoa, the superb, will give place to Flor¬ 
ence, the beautiful; but Edinburgh, Scotland’s pride for 
beauty, remains forever fixed in the mind. The x 4 merican 
traveller landing in Glasgow will be astonished by its 
commercial activity, its crowded streets, its vast ship¬ 
yards. In population and manufactories it almost equals 
Philadelphia. 

The women are strong, sturdy, and robust, but they 
seem better fitted to climb the hills of Scotland than to 
adorn the drawing-rooms of a city. In strolling through 
the streets, I could not help thinking that if Glasgow 
were a criterion, all the beautiful Scottish women must be 
with Burns’ Highland Mary, in heaven. The men are 

1 Scotia’s Fair Capital. By Eugene Didier. The Chauiatiguan, May, 
1889. 


2I6 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


hardy, but not handsome, possessing more of the vigor 
of Rob Roy than the polish of Prince Charles Edward. 
They are very serious, and, like Poe, smile, but never laugh. 

Although time is money in Glasgow, and money is 
much sought and highly appreciated, yet the people are 
uniformly polite; they not only tell you the way, but 
show it to you, and often go with you. The Scotch are 
intensely national, but very ignorant and indifferent about 
American affairs. However, I met no person so ignorant 
as the Italian count who inquired whether it was not 
dangerous to venture outside of New York on account of 
the Indians. 

If Glasgow astonished me by its busy life, Edinburgh 
delighted me by its incomparable beauty, its many histori¬ 
cal associations, its literary culture, its intellectual achieve¬ 
ments. “ A city set upon a hill cannot be hid.” Edinburgh 
is built upon three hills, and is beautiful from every point 
of view. Sir Walter Scott preferred that from Blackford’s 
Hill, on the south. Lord Jeffrey declared no view so 
beautiful as that from Corstorphine Hill, on the west. 
Robert Chambers favored the view from the east, while 
Alexander Smith was enchanted by the view from the 
north. 

I have stood on the Pincian Hill and viewed the seven- 
hilled city on the Tiber as the last rays of the setting sun 
rested upon the mighty dome of St. Peter’s ; I have looked 
down upon Paris from the top of Mont Martre; I have 
seen Constantinople from the height of Galatea, with the 
beautiful banks of the Bosphorus lined with airy palaces 
and stately mosques, but the view from Edinburgh Castle 
struck me as unrivalled in its magnificent sweep of land 
and sea. 


SCOTIA’S FAIR CAPITAL. 


217 


The people of Edinburgh ask the stranger with confi¬ 
dence, whether Princes Street is not the finest in the 
world. I have not seen all the streets in the world, there¬ 
fore I cannot say whether Princes Street is the finest. It is 
certainly a beautiful street, and on a clear day, when crowded 
with the beauty and fashion of Edinburgh, it presents a 
bright and animated scene. The buildings and promenade 
are on only one side of the street ; the other side opens 
upon gardens, terraces, bridges, and the Mound where the 
Scott monument stands. 

Readers of the Waverley novels will remember how 
frequently and generously Scott feeds his characters. 
The love of good cheer is characteristic of the Scotch 
people, and hospitality is unbounded. The great variety 
of dishes that appear on American tables is unknown in 
Scotland, especially in the matter of vegetables — potatoes, 
peas, and cabbage are the rule. 

The hotels are more home-like and quiet than ours. 
They have none of that luxurious upholstery that dazzles 
the eye and empties the purse in America. A beautiful 
room with four windows is only eighty-seven and a half 
cents a day, breakfast thirty-seven and a half cents, dinner 
eighty-seven and a half cents, consisting of four courses — 
soup, fish, meat, and sweets. The waiters are polite and 
attentive, and the guest is made to feel that he is an indi¬ 
viduality, and is not merely No. 2222, as is too often the 
case in our own independent land, where hotel clerks and 
servants sometimes put on very insolent airs. 

The people of Edinburgh are better dressed, gayer and 
more stylish in every respect than those of her commer¬ 
cial neighbor. Many of the people look as if they might 
sometimes smile,- and some that they might even enjoy a 


2i8 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


gQod laugh. The women have rosy cheeks, and walk 
with a fine elastic step that indicates robust health. More 
beautiful than Florence, more literary than London, more 
solid than Paris, Edinburgh is most favorable, either for 
intellectual work, or intellectual enjoyment. 


HOLLAND.i 

Whoever looks for the first time at a large map of 
Holland, wonders that a country so constituted can con¬ 
tinue to exist. At the first glance, it is difficult to say 
whether Holland belongs most to the continent or to the 
sea. Those broken and compressed coasts, those deep 
ba3^s, those great rivers that, losing the aspect of rivers, 
seem bringing new seas to the sea; and that sea, which, 
changing itself into rivers, penetrates the land and breaks 
it into archipelagoes; the lakes, the vast morasses, the 
canals crossing and recrossing each other, all combine to 
give the idea of a country that may at any moment dis¬ 
integrate and disappear. Seals and beavers would seem 
to be its rightful inhabitants ; but since there are men bold 
enough to live in it, they surely cannot ever sleep in 
peace. 

> These were my thoughts as I looked for the first time at 
a map of Holland, and experienced a desire to know some¬ 
thing about the formation of so strange a country ; and as 
that which I learned induced me to write this book, I put 
it down here, with the hope that it may induce others to 
read it. 

1 Holland and its People. By Edmondo De Amicis. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 
New York, i88i. 



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HOLLAND. 


219 


What sort of a country Holland is, has been told by 
many in few words. 

Napoleon said that it was an alluvion of French rivers — 
the Rhine, the Scheldt, and the Meuse, — and with this 
pretext he added it to the Empire. One writer‘has defined 
it as a sort of transition between land and sea. Another, 
as an immense crust of earth floating on the water. 
Others, an annex of the old continent, the China of 



Scene in Holland. 


Europe, the end of the earth and the beginning of the 
ocean, a measureless raft of mud and sand ; and Philip II. 
called it the country nearest to hell. 

But they all agreed upon one point, and all expressed 
it in the same words: — Holland is a conquest made 
by man over the sea — it is an artificial country — the 
Hollanders made it — it exists because the Hollanders 
preserve it — it will vanish whenever the Hollanders shall 
abandon it. 

To comprehend this truth, we must imagine Holland as 










220 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


it was when first inhabited by the first German tribes that 
wandered away in search of a country. 

It was almost uninhabitable. There were vast tem¬ 
pestuous lakes, like seas, touching each other; morass 
beside morass ; one tract covered with brushwood after 
another; immense forests of pines, oaks, and alders, tra¬ 
versed by herds of wild horses ; and so thick were these 
forests that tradition says one could travel leagues passing 
from tree to tree without ever putting foot to the ground. 
The deep bays and gulfs carried into the heart of the 
country the fury of the northern tempests. 

Some provinces disappeared once every year under the 
waters of the sea, and were nothing but muddy tracts, 
neither land nor water, where it was impossible either to 
walk or to sail. The large rivers without sufficient in¬ 
clination to descend to the sea, wandered here and there 
uncertain of their way, and slept in monstrous pools and 
ponds among the sands of the coasts. It was a sinister 
place, swept by furious winds, beaten by obstinate rains, 
veiled in a perpetual fog, where nothing was heard but the 
roar of the sea, and the voices of wild beasts and birds of 
the ocean. 

The first people who had the courage to plant their tents 
there, had to raise with their own hands dykes of earth to 
keep out the rivers and the sea, and lived within them like 
shipwrecked men upon desolate islands, venturing forth at 
the subsidence of the waters in quest of food in the shape 
of fish and game, and gathering the eggs of marine birds 
upon the sand. 

Now, if we remember that such a region has become one 
of the most fertile, wealthiest, and best regulated countries 
in the world, we shall understand the justice of the saying 





221 


Windmills 
























































































































































































222 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


that Holland is a conquest made by man. To drain the 
lakes the Hollanders pressed the air into their service. 
The lakes, the marshes, were surrounded by dykes, the 
dykes by canals ; and an army of windmills, putting in 
motion force-pumps, turned the water into the canals which 
carried it off to the rivers and the sea. Thus vast tracts 
of land buried under the water, saw the sun, and were 
transformed, as if by magic, into fertile fields, covered 
with villages and intersected by canals and roads. 


SKATING IN HOLLAND.! 

Any mention of winter in Holland would be incomplete 
without allusion to that which constitutes the originality 
and principal character of winter life in that country. 
Skating in Holland is not only a delightful exercise but an 
ordinary way of getting about. 

In times of hard frost the canals are changed into roads, 
and skates do the office of boats. The peasant skates to 
market, the laborer to his work, the shopkeeper to his 
shop ; whole families go from the country to the city with 
bag and basket upon their backs, or upon sleds. Skating 
is as easy and natural to them as walking, and they do it 
with a rapidity that makes them all but invisible. 

In former years bets were made among the best Dutch 
skaters as to which of them could keep up with the railway 
train that ran along the edge of the canal; and in general 
the skater not only kept even with the train, but even out¬ 
stripped it. There are people who skate from The Hague 

1 Holland and its People. By Edmondo De Amicis. G. P. Putnam’s 
Sons, New York, i88i. 


SKATING IN HOLLAND. 


223 


to Amsterdam and back in the same day ; university stu¬ 
dents, who leave Utrecht in the morning, dine at Amster¬ 
dam, and get back to college before night. The bet of 
going from Amsterdam to Leyden in a little more than an 
hour has often been won. And it is not only the speed 
that is remarkable, but the admirable security with which 
they traverse immense distances on skates. Many peas¬ 
ants skate from one city to another at night. Sometimes 
walking along the canal you see a human figure pass and 
disappear like an arrow; it is a peasant girl carrying milk 
to some house in town. 

There are also sleds or sledges of every size and form ; 
some pushed from behind by a skater, some drawn by 
horses, some moved by two iron-shod sticks held in the 
hands of the person seated in the sledge ; and quantities of 
carriages and vehicles of different sorts, deprived of their 
wheels, and placed on runners, flying along with all the 
rapidity of the others. Sometimes vessels, with all sails 
set, move on the frozen rivers with such rapidity that 
persons on board are obliged to cover their eyes, unable to 
bear the dizzy velocity of their flight. 

The finest of the festivals of Holland are held upon the 
ice. At Rotterdam, the Meuse becomes a place of meet¬ 
ing for all sorts of diversions. The snow is swept off, so 
that the ice is as clean as a pavement of crystal; cafes, 
eating-houses, pavilions and small theatres rise on every 
side ; all are illuminated at night; by day there is a throng 
of skaters of all ages, sexes, and conditions. 

In other cities, above all in Friesland, which is the classic 
land of the art, there are societies of skaters who institute 
public trials of skill for prizes. Masts and banners are 
planted along the canals, stands and railings are put up ; 


224 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


an immense multitude assembles from all the villages 
round about, and the flower of the citizens are on the 
ground ; music sounds ; the skaters are dressed in peculiar 
costumes, the women wearing pantaloons ; there are men’s 
races, and women’s races, and then men and women to¬ 
gether ; and the names of the winners are inscribed upon 
the rolls of the society, and are famous for years after. 


DUTCH CHARACTER.! 

In my study of Dutch character, it did not appear to me 
true, though I had read the statement in several books, that 
the Hollanders are fond of talking about their maladies, and 
that they are avaricious and egotistical. As to the first 
accusation, they deride the Germans for this very defect. 
In support of the second, the rather incredible fact has been 
adduced that during a 'naval battle with the English the 
officers of the Dutch fleet went on board the enemy’s ships, 
which were out of ammunition, and sold them powder and 
projectiles at exorbitant prices; after which the battle re¬ 
commenced. 

Against this accusation of avarice stand the facts of the 
wealth and ease of the citizens, and the large sums spent 
in books and pictures ; and still more in large beneficence, 
in which Dutch society is incontestably the first in Europe. 
And it is not official beneficence which in any way receives 
its impulse from the government, but spontaneous, and 
very liberal, exercised by a large and powerful community 
which founds innumerable institutes, schools, prizes, libra- 

1 Holland and its People. By Edmondo De Amicis. G. P. Putnam’s 
Sons, New York, i88i. 


DUTCH CHARACTER. 


225 


ries, popular meetings; which aids and precedes the gov¬ 
ernment in the work of public instruction; which extends 
its wings from the great city to the humblest village, cover¬ 
ing all religious sects, all ages, all professions, and all 
needs ; a beneficence, in short, by virtue of which there is not 
left in Holland one poor person without shelter, or an arm 
without work. All writers who have studied Holland agree 
in saying that there is perhaps no other state in Europe 
in which such copious alms descend from the wealthy 
to the needy classes, in proportion to the population. 

It is not to be said, however, that the people of Holland 
are faultless, for they are not so, if we are to count as 
faults the .want of those qualities which should be like the 
splendor and softness of their virtues. Their firmness is 
sometimes obstinacy ; their probity has a touch of niggard¬ 
liness ; in their coldness is felt the absence of that spon¬ 
taneity of feeling without which it seems as if there could 
be no affection, no generosity, no true greatness of soul. 
But the better we know them, the more we hesitate to pro¬ 
nounce such judgments, and the more we feel the growth 
of sympathy and respect for them. 

Voltaire, when he judged Holland seriously, remembered 
that in her capital cities he found “neither an idle man, 
nor a poor man, nor a dissipated man, nor an insolent 
man,” and that he had seen everywhere “labor and 
modesty.” Louis Napoleon proclaimed that in no people 
of Europe were good sense and the sentiments of reason 
and justice innate as in the Dutch ; Descartes gave them 
the highest praise that a philosopher can give to a people, 
saying that in no country did one enjoy greater liberty 
than in Holland ; Charles V. said that they were “the best 
of subjects, but the v/orst of slaves.” 

Q 


226 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


PORTSMOUTH.! i 

i 

Before leaving England for these deep-sea allurements, | 
I spent a day at Portsmouth, where every lamp and win- j 
dow breathes war and glory, and where even the hitching- j 
posts are disused cannon. Portsmouth, better than any I 
other spot in Great Britain, illustrates the military and j 
naval power of the country, and affords a reasonable expla- | 
nation of the old claim of Britannia ruling the waves. 

Profound peace prevailed, the horizon held no clouds at 
the time I saw it, and yet the great dockyard displayed an j 
activity such as war might call forth. Every one seemed 
overburdened with duties — soldiers rushed about, bearing 
messages; officers in half uniform bristled with impor¬ 
tance ; sailors were as thick as monkeys in Brazil; and 
workmen plied their vocation amid a din of hammer so 
terrific as almost to make one deaf. If this was an every¬ 
day scene, then extraordinary occasions must be won¬ 
derful. j 

Portsmouth is one of England’s strongest ports, and is | 
accounted impregnable. Money has never been a consid- I 
eration with the people when fortifications were called for, | 
and millions of pounds have been expended to make them 
complete. In a military point of view, the English have 
reason to be proud of this old garrison, and they rarely 
lose a chance of calling the attention of strangers to its 
strength and massiveness. 

For my part, I should consider Portsmouth an admirable 

1 Aalesund to Tetuan. By Charles R. Corning. DeWolfe, Fiske and 
Company, Boston, 1888. 





PORTSMOUTH. 


227 


school in which to give visiting Zulus and Maoris sound 
lessons in British supremacy and authority, so that they 
might depart to their people filled with astonishment and 
fear. In this way some of England’s needless and annoy¬ 
ing wars with natives might very likely be averted, and at 
the same time the leading chiefs could enjoy a royal tour 
and go back to their tribes in broadcloth and silk hats. 
Even to us civilized mortals the martial aspect of the 
town is very impressive, and ought to compel admiration 
from Quakers themselves. 

While these sights are certainly interesting, one must 
spend time to see them, a day at least. Then one gets 
a vivid conception of that infinite labor which is ungrudg- 
ingly given to the iron walls of the queen’s Empire, and 
even the anglophobe begins to entertain a respect for the 
nation that has the foresight and the patriotism to so pro¬ 
tect her honor. 

Armed with the necessary passes, I went on board the 
Thunderer, that monstrous ironclad, and was shown all I 
desired to see. The officer in charge kindly explained the 
working of the battery, which is simple in its manage¬ 
ment, and might be handled by a child. Then he en¬ 
larged upon the guns, claiming for them a projectile force 
so tremendous that I could almost fancy this terrible ship 
outside of Portland, Maine, flinging solid shot across the 
summit of Mount Washington. 

While I was on the Thunderer they were making active 
preparations for sailing; and the hurry and confusion inci¬ 
dent to departure made the decks anything but shipshape. 
In less than two months later this terror of naval warfare 
had reached the Bosphorus as a living menace to Russian 
and French influences, and, to more fully demonstrate its 


228 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


fearful claim, began exercising this wonderful battery of 
thirty-two guns. At almost the first discharge one of 
these celebrated guns burst into fragments, killing a score 
of officers and men, and, for aught I know, my guide 
might have been among the number, thus teaching to the 
gunnery boards of England a wholesome lesson in more 
careful inspection. 

The British admiralty rejoices in a nomenclature so awe¬ 
inspiring as to cause consternation among its foes. The 
Dreadnaught, the Inflexible, the Devastation, the Her¬ 
cules, and the Dictator are among its choice specimens; 
and if there is any virtue in a name, the battle may be 
half-won. 

This European craze for constructing mammoth ships- 
of-war has by no means run its course. Every nation vies 
with every other, and a new idea, no matter how unsound 
it may be, or how expensive, is eagerly seized upon and 
incorporated into the prevailing architecture. 

England is always experimenting; and her experiments 
have caused sorrow and humiliation, as every traveller 
who has read the bronze tablet commemorating the crew 
of the Captain, in Saint Paul’s Cathedral, will testify. 
Now France leads in the race ; while Italy, not to be out¬ 
done, has startled the world by producing such monsters 
as the Italia and the Lepanto, with armor thirty-six inches 
thick, with a displacement of 14,000 tons, and carrying 
batteries of four lOO-ton guns. Where this extravagant 
competition will end nobody knows, but it is safe to as¬ 
sume that a good share of it will fetch up at the bottom 
of the sea. 

Not far from the granite walls of the arsenal lies the 
historic Victory, mournfully tossing on those waves whose 






PORTSMOUTH. 


229 


mistress she once was. Like a scarred veteran, she is an 
object of compassion and interest; but her day has gone, 
and ruthless decay has seized her for its own. At the risk 
of being somewhat disrespectful, the Victory, with her vast, 
almost square, bulk of four stories, reminded me of a shoe 
factory painted black. The four rows of ports dotting its 
bellying sides look highly ridiculous in these days; and 
the carved balconies around the stern, admirably adapted 
for flower-pots and moonlight flirtations, add another com¬ 
ical feature ; but once on deck, and there comes over one 
the becoming sentiment which the memory of Lord Nel¬ 
son always inspires. The decks are low, yet not gloomy, 
owing to the abundance of light admitted through the 
port-holes, and are kept clean and orderly. 

There is quite a museum of Trafalgar mementos on 
board, comprising, of course, cannon balls, swords, guns, 
flags, cutlasses, and innumerable objects bequeathed by 
battle; but the most precious among them is the coat 
and vest, blood-stained, and yet well preserved, that were 
worn by Nelson on the glorious October day three quar¬ 
ters of a century ago. On the quarter-deck a silver star 
marks the spot where the French musketman shot him 
down; and around it stood little knots of sight-seers, lost 
in reverie. 

This venerable pensioner is now used as a school-ship, 
where the youth of England may learn, amid hallowed 
influences, how to be brave and patriotic. So long as 
the old frigate tosses upon the waves, she will be an 
object of fondest devotion. Fathers will carry their chil¬ 
dren there; and generation, after generation will pour over 
the lofty sides, and ramble about the quaint old decks, and 
come away thanking Heaven that no matter what the fu- 


230 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


ture may have in store in the way of chance, the glory of 
the Nile and of Trafalgar can never fade. 

Beside the satisfaction of standing on the quarter-deck 
of Nelson’s flag-ship and contemplating the history of na¬ 
tions, I came away full of an additional satisfaction, which 
is rarely permitted to strangers visiting such scenes ; that 
ubiquitous pest, the seller of relics and mementos, never 
once put in an appearance. Neither canes nor pin-cush¬ 
ions carved from the timbers, nor paper-weights made 
from cannon balls, were offered for sale. The locality 
was refreshingly exempt from such irrepressible creatures, 
whose stock in trade is as inexhaustible as the sacred 
relics of Rome. 

In the city, back from the barracks and arsenals, Ports¬ 
mouth has that peaceful English air which is so full of 
charm. The streets are quiet, the walks shady, and the 
houses have peaked roofs and awkward gables. The sea 
views are exquisite, so that when the eye is tired of broad 
barrows and bristling bayonets, the marine pictures in the 
beautiful roadstead furnish an agreeable change. 

The views from the Parade and the Clarence Esplanade 
looking towards the Isle of Wight are exceedingly lovely, 
giving a rare blending of war and peace. In the fore¬ 
ground are the ironclads and the land batteries, while 
across the harbor is that emerald island sleeping as tran¬ 
quilly as it did on the great creation day long before wars 
were a part of civilization. 

In the season the town is full of strangers, who seek 
its favored situation to catch the soft, invigorating breezes, 
and to lay in a winter’s stock of national conceit; and the 
South-sea park is gay and vivacious all day long. 




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Gibraltar. 






















































GIBRALTAR. 


231 


GIBRALTAR.! 

The rock-bound fortress, with its good, sturdy, Anglo- 
Saxon customs and characteristics, seemed almost like 
home after so many months of wandering, and I welcomed 
its limited attractions and pleasures. The taste for land¬ 
scape ornamentation is exhibited in every spot where such 
attempts are practicable. Even the unwilling rock has 
been removed in many places to make gardens ai d 
lawns so that the English population may feel more con¬ 
tented. 

From the landing port to the Alameda one sees the 
rugged stubbornness of the town : — on one hand the sea 
mole; on the other, the sloping sides of the famous rock, 
thickly covered with stone houses, — terraces rising one 
upon another, and flanked by the steep sides which seem 
to defy the antic-loving goat as well as the invading foe. 

The Alameda is one of the sweetest little breathing spots 
in Europe, and is dear to the hearts of the Gibraltese, as 
land is a rarity in that uncompromising locality. There 
the gardener has displayed his most consummate skill in 
the arrangement of flower-pots, the setting out of plants, 
and in the care of hedges and shrubbery, until in the hollow 
of the rock, there is presented to the eye a nook of rarest 
beauty, which even more favored spots might envy. 

In the afternoons the garrison bands discourse popular 
airs, and the town enjoys its daily promenade while the 
lazy natives, to whom has been given the name of rock 

1 Aalesund to Tetuan. By Charles R. Corning. DeWolfe, Fiske and 
Company, Boston, 1888. 


232 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


scorpions, recline at full length on the benches, and turn a 
deaf ear to the music. 

Beyond the sunny pleasure-ground, the road leads past 
gigantic fortifications, across miniature ravines, and beneath 
frowning gates, until Europa Point is reached. There all 
attempts at pedestrianism must end ; but the panorama of 
glittering sea and white sail is spread out with charming 
effect. There in silent contemplation one may sit and 
while away idle hours, taking no heed of time, conscious of 
nothing save the soft lullaby of the waves and the winds. 

This point being the land’s end, attracts those in want 
of exercise, and furnishes a panacea for torpid livers. It 
is true that long walks may be taken between the ‘Tines,” 
as the invisible boundary between Gibraltar and Spain is 
called ; but the roads are dusty and hot, and the eating 
places are execrable, while at Europa Point tempting 
refreshments gladden the visitor. Consequently this two- 
mile promenade is popular with the ladies of the garrison, 
and with strangers as well. 

At this jumping-off place are massive fortifications, 
containing guns of heaviest calibre, powerful enough, so 
they say, to throw shells against hostile fleets endeavoring 
to pass the straits, though the distance is several leagues. 
Prettily dressed children play about these mammoth guns, 
mounting the carriages, or trying to climb upon their huge 
shining backs; but they might as well try to straddle the 
the back of an elephant. And yet the mechanism is so 
nicely adjusted that a child might manoeuvre the eighty-ton 
monsters with surprising ease. 

Cannon are set in every vantage spot; they even lurk 
behind rose-bushes and in the shadows of jutting rocks, 
almost unseen by the passer-by, but ready at a moment’s 



Roadway — Gibraltar 


























































































































4 







GIBRALTAR. 


233 


warning to belch out flame and shot. I would not under¬ 
take to say how many batteries there are concealed from 
view, it is enough to call to mind those in plain sight. 

On the east Gibraltar needs no artificial defences, for 
there the gigantic wall of rock is almost perpendicular to 
the sea, and no danger can threaten it. At its base, on the 
beach, is Calatan Bay, a small settlement inhabited by 
fishermen, where the soldiers on duty look out for smug¬ 
glers, and watch the blue sea as it rolls on towards the 
orient. The north side is equally precipitous, rising 
twelve hundred feet from the sandy plain connecting Gib¬ 
raltar with the Spanish mainland, and on account of its 
commanding position its unyielding sides have been hewn 
into those famous galleries that are the wonder of the 
world. 

In order to thwart any Spanish attempt at invasion, 
nearly three miles of these passages, costing vast sums of 
money and years of labor, have been completed, situated 
high above the sea, and punctured with embrasures, 
through which ugly cannon poke their black noses as if 
impatient to roar out defiance to the foe. These passages 
are large enough to work the guns in, and tortuous in their 
course, for they wind in and out in their long circuit, end¬ 
ing in a spacious chamber known as St. George’s Hall. 
This unlooked-for cave is used as a banquet-hall whenever 
the officials wish to make a sensation; and many are the 
good times connected with its history. 

My soldier guide suggested that I go out on a narrow 
projection, and look off. I did so, but nothing could tempt 
me to repeat the venturesome act. The shelf jutted out a 
few feet, and was wide enough to stand on ; and there, 
motionless, between heaven and earth, I looked down that 


234 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


dizzy declivity six hundred feet; then, turning my eyes 
upward, I saw the same unbroken wall towering toward the 
sky. I dared not breathe on that perilous crag; the beating 
of my heart seemed to jar my brittle footstool; and when I 
stepped back into the Hall, I at once realized how fool¬ 
hardy I had been. But this is the way to comprehend the 
martial importance of these galleries and their strategic 
position. 

Long and narrow slits are cut through the rock, so that 
riflemen, safe from opposing fire, may pick off their victims 
as easily as a hunter shoots a squirrel. Nothing in the 
way of advantageously destroying life was omitted in the 
military calculations. Even the narrow peninsula leading 
to the Spanish lines is undermined, and can be blown up 
in the twinkling of an eye. 

In old times Gibraltar was the key to the Mediterranean, 
but it is not so now ; and no nation, Spain excepted, cares 
a whit about getting possession of its sullen crags and 
battlements. 

High among the rocks is the signal station, and the 
walk to it is a favorite one with those who find solace in 
vigorous exercise. Its horizon of land and sea is one of 
the most expansive in the world, and no craft passes 
without speaking to the watchers on the parapets. In 
this way the maritime world is kept fully informed as to 
its vessels, for no sooner has the vessel been recognized 
than the intelligence is spread from Calcutta to San 
Francisco. 

If there is any spot in the world that can show a more 
comprehensive collection of ethnological specimens in so 
limited a space, then I will place Gibraltar second in the 
list. I believe every civilized country in Christendom has 


GIBRALTAR. 


235 


its representatives on this barren rock, for, although the 
population is only fifteen thousand, exclusive of the mili¬ 
tary, it is so thoroughly mixed that one meets nearly every 
nation on earth in walking up Waterport Street. The 
native, or “ rock scorpions,” take numerical precedence, 
and following unequally are Englishmen, Spaniards, Portu¬ 
guese, Italians, Frenchmen, Moors, Arabs, Maltese, Egyp¬ 
tians, Greeks, Turks, Russians, Austrians, and Americans. 

At first sight a stranger is deceived as to the population 
of Gibraltar, for on entering at the Water Port he sees a 
surging crowd of men and women, most of them decidedly 
un-English, all doing something in the way of trading. 
Donkeys and goats are numerous, and their unmusical 
remonstrances rise above the unintelligible jargon of the 
market, where all are plying their commercial pursuits, 
regardless of honesty or of consequences. 

Pursuing his way through the street, he sees small 
multitudes, so to speak, in every alley and lane, and he 
begins to wonder how so many people manage to live in a 
town so devoid of vegetation and the bare necessaries of 
life as Gibraltar. After a day or two he learns that these 
crowds are from without the walls. They come in as soon 
as the gates are open in the morning, going out during 
the afternoon before the gates are closed ; for to be caught 
in town after the evening gun is fired might entail con¬ 
siderable inconvenience. 

This horde of humanity are unmistakably Spanish, and 
belong beyond the Spanish lines, but they make their 
living by trading — bringing in produce and fowls, taking 
back calicoes, ribbons, tea, coffee, sugar, and, last but not 
least, tobacco. They have to smuggle this potent plant of 
civilization, for the soldiers at the lines are very rigorous in 


236 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


their searches, and woe to the unfortunate who is caught 
attempting to evade the law of the kingdom. 

I used to walk out to the lines to watch the operation of 
searching, and more sport could not be had on the comic 
stage. The long train of returning natives, with goats, 
fowls, donkeys, and vermin, comes to a halt at the Spanish 
barrier, blockading the road, and carrying on the loudest 
conversation I ever heard, evidently impatient to undergo 
the ordeal that awaits them. 

Pending this governmental inquisition they make arrange¬ 
ments for meeting the officers of the customs by concealing 
the contraband snuff and tobacco in every conceivable 
place. I have seen them take off their shoes and put the 
interdicted article into them, then sling them over their 
heads and go on barefoot. The women arrange their hair 
so ingeniously as to leave a cavity where a small package 
of the weed may be comfortably concealed. Even further 
does the fertility of their cunning go, and they evince no 
compunction in devoting their capacious skirts and under¬ 
clothing to purposes of smuggling, nor do they forget that 
an infant in arms possesses many possibilities in the art of 
evading keen eyesight. Loaves of bread are ingeniously 
cut into two parts, the soft inside taken out, and the hole 
filled with good tobacco, and then flung carelessly into the 
donkey’s pannier. This often accomplishes its purpose. 

Of all ingenious plots, the one related to me by an 
English official beats them all. An old Spaniard was wont 
to cross the lines daily with a drove of turkeys ; but hard 
luck seemed to follow him, so that every night he returned 
with the number scarcely decreased. He continued his 
honest endeavors for many months, but nobody bought his 
turkeys; yet he did not appear to be disheartened. 


GIBRALTAR. 


237 


Notwithstanding this adverse fortune, the aged peasant 
made his daily visit to the garrison, now and then selling a 
turkey, but never more than one ; so he returned to the 
lines about as turkey-laden as he went. But alas for the 
aged peasant ! one of the innocent and unsalable birds, 
wearied by too much daily exercise, or overcome by the 
heat took it into its head to go into convulsions and die 
right before the platoon of customs officers. The turkey- 
driver was transfixed with terror, and to add to his woe the 
rest of the drove became unmanageable, and indulged in a 
complicated series of gymnastics that surprised the lookers 
on and unfolded secrets worthy of a prime minister. The 
turkeys flew and fluttered, raising their unmelodious voices, 
moving their drooping wings, and resisting all attempts at 
pacification. 

In the meanwhile the unfortunate cause of all this dis¬ 
turbance was no more, and one of the soldiers started to 
examine the fowl, when, to his utter astonishment, he 
discovered small packages of tobacco ingeniously bound 
under the wings. For months the enterprising old Span¬ 
iard had successfully carried on this game; but like all 
good things there had to be an end, and when I was in 
Gibraltar the turkey trade was zealously watched by the 
minions of the law. 

If a love of soldiery interests one, then Gibraltar is 
fascinating beyond any city in Europe. The garrison 
numbers from four thousand to six thousand troops, 
mostly artillery, and yet when I was there infantry was 
in the ascendancy, for there were three Scotch kilted reg¬ 
iments, besides the rifle brigade. Soldiers were met at 
every turn, and their bright uniforms gave a brilliant 
touch to the moving picture of Gibraltese life. 


238 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


On* Saturday afternoons the entire garrison moves out 
the gates down on the North Front, as the sandy plain 
between British and Spanish territory is called, and goes 
through all sorts of warlike manoeuvres. Charges, re¬ 
treats, skirmishes, battles, parades, and reviews are prac¬ 
tised before the governor and his glittering staff. 

During my sojourn I saw the Victoria Cross conferred 
on a brave man. The ceremony took place Monday after¬ 
noon on the rose-fringed alameda, and a lovelier day never 
dawned. A warm sun beat down upon the guns and bay¬ 
onets, making them flash and pulsate as if instinct with 
life. The tunics and plumes showed in brightest hues as 
the garrison marched past to form the hollow-square — the 
picturesque and barbaric Highlander with bear-skin caps, 
red coats, plaid sashes, and leggins with ugly daggers pro¬ 
truding, the corps of engineers in dark blue, the rifle brigade 
in jackets and trousers of solemn black, while in the centre 
of the great square was the scarred and war-worn 24th 
regiment fresh from the fields of Zululand. 

Around this wall of steel was gathered half the popu¬ 
lation of the town, eager to see the ceremony. The 
commander-in-chief and staff formed the side directly 
opposite the regiment about to be honored. The consoli¬ 
dated bands, prior to the exercises, played their liveliest 
and most popular music ; then at a signal perfect silence 
fell, and Lord Napier of Magdala rode forward, and the 
brave soldier, Williams, stepped from the ranks. 

In a few words Lord Napier congratulated the humble 
private for his courage and valor, then, dismounting, 
pinned the precious badge on the soldier’s breast. The 
bands struck up their merry tunes, for the queen had been 
pleased to give her cross to a man who at the risk of his 


MARBLE-MINING IN CARRARA. 


239 


own life had saved the lives of six others who lay wounded 
in the hospital at Rorkes Drift. Single-handed he de¬ 
fended his comrades against the furious onslaught of the 
maddened Zulus, and his reward was the iron cross. 


MARBLE-MINING IN CARRARA.i 

Carrara marble is an article well known the world 
over. It is reputed to be unquestionably the best marble 
for the use of sculptors, gravestone builders, architects, 
and other marble-workers, and inasmuch as it has enjoyed 
this reputation without dispute for over nineteen centuries, 
it is fair to presume that it is justly entitled to its good 
name. The ancient Romans of the time of Augustus 
could find no other marble equal to that of Carrara, and 
they used it freely in making statues and in building mon¬ 
uments, temples, and various other public edifices. 

The judgment of the statuaries and architects of the 
‘‘year one” has been re-enforced by that of their succes¬ 
sors in each succeeding generation, and to-day Carrara 
marble is in such demand in every civilized nation of the 
world that nearly one hundred and fifty thousand tons of 
it are quarried every year. Of this the United States 
use about twenty-five thousand tons annually, notwith¬ 
standing the fact that, duty paid, the rough blocks are 
worth about two dollars and a half a foot, or almost two 
cents a pound, as they are landed from the vessel. 

Carrara is situated on the west coast of Italy, forty-five 
miles from Leghorn, and twice as far from Genoa, and, 

1 Marble-mining in Carrara. By Robert W. Welsh. Century Magazine 
for June, 1882. 


240 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


counting in the villages which are dependencies of Car¬ 
rara, it is a city of twenty thousand inhabitants. The 
city stands in a niche of the Apennine Mountains, which 
in its rear rise in barren, rocky cliffs, varying in height 
from three thousand to five thousand feet, and on two 
sides of the town soften into earth-covered hills, from 
three hundred to a thousand feet high, cultivated to their 
very tops by the growers of the grape. These side hills 
lack but an eighth of a mile of coming together on the 
fourth side of the town. If they met, Carrara would be 
like a very small bit of gentian in a very large mortar. 
As it is, this break of an eighth of a mile affords an out¬ 
look into the world, and looking through it, one’s horizon 
is bounded by the Mediterranean. 

Carrara is entirely given up to the trade in marble. 
The sojourner in the city is not slow to learn this fact, nor 
likely to forget it. He is awakened in the morning by 
the clicking of the marble-cutters, and the last sound of 
which he is aware at night is that of the swearing team¬ 
sters, pounding their marble-laden oxen into greater speed. 
The ground floor of almost every house is turned into 
a studio, in which tombstones, cemetery and lawn figures, 
architectural ornaments, and occasionally a fine piece of 
statuary, are produced. 

Wonderful to relate, and much to the surprise of people 
who come to Carrara with no foreknowledge of the place, 
the houses are not built of marble, but of rough stones 
cemented together, and covered on the outside with 
a smooth coating of plaster. There is, however, marble 
enough in the inside work. The doorposts, the window- 
seats and caps, the stairs, the mop-boards, and generally 
the floors are of marble, and a new-comer to Carrara can 


MARBLE-MINING IN CARRARA. 


24 


enjoy a very active month of sneezing if his chambers do 
not afford additional facilities, especially as it is customary 
to throw in a few marble-topped tables and stands, a half- 
dozen marble statues, and now and then an elaborate 
marble mantel-piece. 

Terrible as it would be to spend a lifetime in Carrara, it 
is a very interesting city to the few tourists who stop over 
a day or two on their way from Genoa to Pisa and Flor¬ 
ence. The Carrara marble quarries are certainly one of 
the sights of the world. In Vermont, the workmen 
grovel in the earth for their marble; in Carrara, they go 
up hundreds, sometimes thousands, of feet into the sky 
for theirs. Fancy a range of mountains, as high as the 
highest of the White Mountains of New Hampshire, 
rising almost perpendicularly — mountains of sombre gray 
rock, bare of trees and of every other sort of vegetation. 
At the foot of these mountains, upon a plateau of a few 
hundred acres, place a dingy, dirty, crowded little Italian 
city; upon the sides of the mountains, at heights varying 
from five hundred to thirty-five hundred feet, place the 
marble quarries. 

Seen in a clear day, at a distance of half a dozen miles, 
the Carrara Mountains seem to rise at an angle of ninety 
degrees, and the profile of their sharp peaks is so positive 
and clean, that one can think of nothing more effective 
in the way of description than to say that they look like 
the teeth of a magnified wood-saw. And as for the quar¬ 
ries, some of them seem to be patches of snow obstinately 
refusing to succumb to the sun’s warm rays; others look 
like cascades dashing down the mountain sides; while 
others seem to be mammoth sheets of paper stuck upon 
an immense stone wall. 

R 


242 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


There are upward of four hundred marble quarries, 
large and small, in Carrara, which are worked by about 
five thousand men, and the annual production is about 
one hundred and fifty thousand tons. To procure this 
amount of marble, probably five hundred thousand tons 
are quarried, the difference between the figures which rep¬ 
resent the annual production and those which represent 
the amount quarried being waste. The reason for this is 
that nobody has yet been ingenious enough to devise 
a method of quarrying adapted to Carrara which will 
yield more than one available foot of marble to every four 
feet quarried. Fortunately, the stock of Carrara marble 
is inexhaustible, and two thousand years of steady and 
constantly increasing production have not sensibly affected 
the supply. The mountains of beautiful white stone seem 
only to have been touched here and there by the miners. 

About half of the quarries are located on the sides of an 
immense ravine called Ravaccione. A railroad has been 
built up into this ravine, and tourists who desire to inspect 
the quarries generally go to Ravaccione by rail, saving a 
walk of three miles. Arriving at the terminus of the rail¬ 
road they are about five hundred feet higher than the city 
of Carrara, and are in sight of as many as two hundred 
quarries, of which some are not more than two hundred 
feet above the railroad terminus, while others are very 
high up the mountain sides. 

Very few people undertake to explore the loftier quarries, 
as the feat requires a deal of hard climbing, and in places 
an amount of nerve which people unaccustomed to moun¬ 
taineering do not possess. There are some quarries into 
which the workmen are lowered by ropes, and still others 
in which the men do the drilling, and, in fact, all the other 


MARBLE-MINING IN CARRARA. 


243 


work, while suspended by ropes in mid-air, hundreds of feet 
above the quarry landing. 

In old times, all of the marble quarried at Carrara was 
transported from the quarries by oxen. That intended for 
consumption at Carrara was taken over the rough mountain 
road a distance of from three to five miles, while that in¬ 
tended for shipment was hauled over five miles farther to 
the seashore. The railroad has superseded the wagon 
service to a large extent, but there are still hundreds of 
oxen engaged in carting marble from remote quarries to 
the railroad, and from all the quarries to saw-mills and 
studios which are not reached by the railroad. 

Tourists invariably leave Carrara with the belief that the 
Carrara teamsters are the most cruel men in the world, 
and to this belief the writer gives his full adherence. The 
work which the oxen do would be hard enough under the 
most favorable circumstances, for the roads are inde¬ 
scribably rough. But the circumstances are not favorable 
to the poor brutes. They are under-fed and over-loaded, 
and upon the road are subjected to the most outrageous 
cruelty. There may be a dozen pairs of oxen attached to 
the cart. Twelve brutal men, each armed with a heavy 
goad, are in attendance. The drivers of the eleven leading 
pairs ordinarily ride, each man seated on the yoke of his 
own pair, facing the cart, and steadying himself by a hand 
on the horn of one of the oxen. From the time the team 
starts from the quarries until it leaves its load, there is no 
cessation of cruelty. It is not to be wondered at that the 
life of an ox terminates ordinarily within three years of the 
day on which he makes his first journey to the quarries. 

Carrara laborers, and especially those who are engaged 
in quarrying and transporting marble, certainly have a very 


244 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


hard time of it. Like the oxen, they work much and eat 
little. For a day’s work, beginning at sunrise and lasting 
to sunset, the compensation is not more than forty-five 
cents. It seems almost impossible that a single man can 
live on such wages, to say nothing of men who have large 
families to support. Some of the quarrymen live five or 
six miles from the scene of their labors, and they have, 
therefore, in addition to a day of severe toil, to take a daily 
walk of ten or twelve miles. 

Many of them are obliged to leave their beds at three 
o’clock in the morning in order to reach the quarries in 
season to do a full day’s work. They take with them in 
their coat or trousers’ pocket the food for the day, which 
consists of a small loaf of bread. When they return home 
at night they eat the principal meal of the day, a dish of 
boiled mush, or a sort of soup made of bread, water, and 
oil. In the summer they are able to garnish their tables 
with a dish of vegetables, into which the aromatic garlic 
is sure to be strongly infused. Meat and fish are luxuries 
which are indulged in on rare occasions. 

Most of the marble intended for export is taken to the 
seashore, five miles away, and is unloaded from the cars or 
ox-wagons upon the sandy beach. Thousands of blocks of 
marble are to be seen at this depot, each block bearing the 
initials of its owner and the number by which it is recorded 
in the owner’s books. Here the final preparation for ship¬ 
ment is made. The work of squaring or shaping the 
block, which was begun at the quarries, is completed here, 
and the edges of the blocks receive what might be called 
a “ rough smoothing.” This done, Carrara having no good 
harbor, the marble is put into small vessels and sent to Leg¬ 
horn and Genoa, for shipment to foreign ports. 


PRIDE AND POVERTY IN SPAIN. 


245 


PRIDE AND POVERTY IN SPAIN.i 

Pride is a heavy load to carry, and especially for one 
with slender resources to support his dignity. There was 
a time when Spanish grandees might consider themselves 
the first gentlemen in Europe, since they had not only 
rank but fortune, many of them very great fortunes, cre¬ 
ated by the influx of wealth from Mexico and Peru, which 
made them like the merchant princes of Venice. In a few 
cases the old estates remain in the family, but in the great 
number the wealth has been scattered till the descendants 
are left with only the inheritance of poverty, which is 
made more embarrassing by being associated with a proud 
name. 

Here is the dilemma in which tens of thousands of 
Spanish gentlemen find themselves to-day. Indeed the 
number might be enlarged, for while there is an old aris¬ 
tocracy, bearing illustrious names that date back to the time 
of Castile and Aragon, the ancient blood has descended 
into other channels and flowed in many directions ; so that, 
while the heads of the great houses might be counted, it is 
impossible to count when you come to the third and fourth 
— yes and to the tenth — generation. Including all these, 
the Spanish nobility has been estimated, incredible as it 
may seem, to comprise nearly one-fifteenth of the whole 
population of Spain ! 

How is a higher class so numerous to be supported ? 
Some may become officers in the Army or Navy, but for 

1 Old Spain and New Spain. By Henry M. Field, D.D, Charles Scrib¬ 
ner’s Sons, New York, 1888. 


246 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


the larger part there is little hope of anything, ‘‘ fit for a 
gentleman ” except to get some employment under the 
government; and to obtain that, however humble the 
position and petty the pay, is the ambition of many a man 
in whose veins flows the blue blood of the proudest fami¬ 
lies of Old Spain. 

A Spaniard would rather die than not keep up appear¬ 
ances. If he aspires to a position in society, he will try 
to appear rich, or at least independent, while in reality he 
may be desperately poor. To this end there are two things 
which are more important to him than food and drink — 
a carriage and a box at the opera ! To show himself in the 
Prado at a certain hour of the day, and in the opera at 
night, satisfies his ambition. For the rest, how he lives, 
nobody knows and nobody cares. He need not give din¬ 
ners ; indeed he may not have a dinner to give, or even to 
eat himself. When he comes back from his daily drive, 
and alights at his door, he may retire into the recesses of 
his chamber, and there partake of the meanest food to sat¬ 
isfy the cravings of hunger, and nobody be the wiser. 

The Spaniards have a convenient proverb that “The 
stomach has no windows.” What a man wears on his 
back is exposed to the gaze of all men ; but what he eats 
nobody sees. Or if indeed he does not eat at all, nobody 
can see that his stomach is very lean and hungry, when 
he muffles his cloak about him, and sallies forth to meet 
the world with an unruffled countenance. Some of the 
stories which were told me in Madrid of the petty econo¬ 
mies to which gentlemen in good society were reduced, 
were quite equal to anything in the shifts of Don Quixote. 

But the Spanish cavalier is not yet at the end of his 
resources or the attainment of his highest felicity. There 


PRIDE AND POVERTY IN SPAIN. 


247 


is one more prize to be gained, and his happiness will be 
complete : it is to get a pension —a hope which would be 
chimerical in a country where such rewards are bestowed 
only for distinguished public services. But they do these 
things differently in Spain. Here pensions are given for 
all sorts of services, or for none. The most trifling claim 
is recognized by the government. It may be very, very 
small, but no matter for that — it is fixed ; and so long as 
it secures the recipient from absolute want, it is enough. 
From that moment he will set up as a gentleman, and not 
do another stroke of work to the end of his days. 

Thus it is that the pension roll of Spain has become so 
great. Every new administration that comes in has a fresh 
army of favorites to be rewarded for devotion to their 
political leaders, and the number swells larger and larger 
from year to year. All this is a burden which the State 
has to carry, and as it takes the labor of two able-bodied 
men to support a third idle one, the drain upon its resources 
is enormous. 

But what cares the happy pensioner ? For him life’s 
woes are ended, and his joys are but just begun. Every 
day he will spend his morning at the cafe, where he will 
sip his coffee, read his journal, and twirl his cigarette; in 
the afternoon he will take his ride or drive (except Sun¬ 
days, when he will go to the bull-ring); and the evening 
he will spend at the theatre or the opera. 

When life flows on with this smooth and even current, 
in a perpetual round of amusements, who can wonder that 
the Spaniard is perfectly satisfied with himself and his 
country ? Why should he not be ? Is not his country the 
o-reatest in the world ? I have been told that even intelli- 
gent Spaniards cherish the belief that it is still the first 



248 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


power in Europe. A year since there was some fear of 
trouble between Spain and Germany about the Caroline 
Islands in the Pacific, and for a week or two the talk in 
the cafes of Madrid was of war, and not a doubt was ex¬ 
pressed that, if it came to blows, Germany would soon find 
out what a formidable enemy she would have to deal with! 
Happily she was forewarned that discretion was the better 
part of valor, and withdrew her pretensions. 

A friend told me that, in conversation with a Spanish 
gentleman familiar with foreign literatures, the latter did 
not hesitate to say that he looked upon them all as only 
so many pale reflections of the far more splendid litera¬ 
ture of Spain ! Another Spanish gentleman, who had 
made a visit to France, could not retain his joy at re¬ 
turning, and said with an air of one who smiled approv¬ 
ingly on a rising young city, that “ Paris was very well, 
but,” with an emphasis, “ it was not Madrid! ” 

This is delicious. Such a man does not belong to the 
nineteenth century. He is a knight of the Middle Ages, 
whose lot it is to live in this vulgar modern time, but who 
still keeps his exalted air, walking on the battlements of 
his ancient towers, all unconscious that the world is sweep¬ 
ing by him, and leaving him far behind. 

There is something truly pathetic in this unconscious¬ 
ness of one who is so full of the ancient glories of his 
country that he cannot perceive its decay, and who still 
dreams dreams and sees visions, keeping up his fallen 
dignity by an increased self-appreciation that shall make 
up for the loss of appreciation of the world ; and one can 
but look with mingled pity and respect on this grand old 
figure, that seems to have stepped out of the sixteenth 
century, and that even in well-worn and faded raiment 
preserves the traces of former splendor. 


PRIDE AND POVERTY IN SPAIN. 249 

Complacency such as this it would be cruel to disturb, 
were it not that these airy fancies need to be dispelled, in 
order that the Spaniards of to-day may come down to the 
hard ground of reality, and on this solid basis reconstruct 
the fabric of their country’s greatness. A nation is made 
up of individuals ; its strength is merely the combined 
strength of millions of men ; and the weakness of char¬ 
acter that makes a man too proud to work is a weakness 
of the State. Herein is the weakness of Spain; she has 
too many knights, and they carry too much heavy armor; 
so that she is sadly overweighted with dignity. The Span¬ 
ish cavalier is a little out of place in this bustling century. 
If this man of war would only realize that the age of peace 
has come, and lay aside his helmet and shield, and be 
content to do a man’s work in this work-a-day world, the 
effect would soon show itself in the general prosperity of 
the country. 

The common people of Spain, who till the soil, are of 
the right stuff: simple and honest, brave in war and in¬ 
dustrious in peace. A friend who, in a residence of many 
i years in Spain, has visited almost every province, and min- 
i gled with the peasantry, tells me he has become very fond 

i of them ; that he has always found them kindly and truth- 

I ful, not disposed to take advantage of a stranger, but bid- 
1 ding them welcome to their, humble homes with genuine 
hospitality. 

Strong in frame, they are tremendous workers in the 
fields. Those who have seen them in the long summer’s 
day, toiling from sun to sun, will admit that no country 
could have better husbandmen. These are they who are 
to create the wealth of Spain ; and if their ranks were not 
I thinned by conscription for the army, and their substance 



250 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


eaten up by taxes, they would in another generation create 
a degree of prosperity such as has not been seen within 
three hundred years. 


CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.^ 

An American ought to feel at home in Spain, as it is the 
country to which is due the discovery of his own, and as 
from the earliest date the relations of the two have been 
most intimate. I have had a new sense of this, since I 
spent an hour with Christopher Columbus, the lineal de¬ 
scendant of the great discoverer, and who inherits his title 
with his immortal name. The late Secretary of Legation, 
to whom I am indebted, as are many of my countrymen, 
for courtesies in Madrid, took me to see the Duke of 
Veragua, for that is the title which he bears. 

As he entered the room, he saluted us with great 
warmth, and at once seized my hat ! — a motion which I 
gently resisted ; but as he still held it, I had to submit. 
My friend told me afterwards that this was a mark of 
Spanish courtesy; for had my host permitted me to sit hat 
in hand, it would seem to imply that he regarded me as a 
stranger, who had come to make a brief and formal call ; 
whereas when he took it from me, and laid it aside with 
due Castilian gravity, it signified that he wished me to 
regard myself as at home, and that (to use a Spanish 
phrase) “his house was mine.” I am sorry to say that it 
was not much of a hat ; for it had been sadly battered out 
of shape in knocking about on land and sea ; but I thought 

1 Old Spain and New Spain. By Henry M. Field, D.D. Charles Scrib¬ 
ner’s Sons, New York, i883. 


CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 


251 


it acquired a certain dignity from having been held in the 
hands of Christopher Columbus, and would have kept it as 
an heirloom in the family, had not a higher authority than 
mine condemned it as unworthy to cover my poor head, so 
it had to go to the bourne from which no hat returns. 

With this cordial welcome one could not indeed but feel 
at home; and as we sat on the sofa side by side, the con¬ 
versation naturally turned to subjects in which we had 
a common interest. Every American is, of course, inter¬ 
ested in the discovery of America, and would pause long 
before what might claim to be a portrait of the great navi¬ 
gator. Our host had found what he regarded as the best 
one in existence in an old monastery, from which he 
obtained it, and it was now hanging on the wall. It is a 
noble countenance, some features of which have been per¬ 
petuated in his descendants, and may be recognized in the 
possessor of the name at the present day. One cannot 
look at it without thinking what a life of care and struggle 
had left its traces on that rugged face during the long and 
weary years that he sought for royal patronage, and sought 
in vain. It is no common feeling that rises in you at the 
moment that you have, looking down upon you, the eyes 
that first saw the shores of the New World. 

Knowing that there had been some question as to the 
burial-place of Columbus, I was glad to be able to make 
inquiry of one who, of all men living, was most likely to be 
rightly informed, and to hear him say that he thought 
there could be no doubt that the remains of his ancestor 
were in the Cathedral at Havana. This is as it ought to 
be: for though he died in Spain (in Valladolid, May 20, 
1506), the country to which he had given a hemisphere, 
and yet to which he was once brought back in chains, was 


252 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


not worthy to keep his bones; and it was most fitting that 
they should be carried across the ocean, to rest forever in 
the New World which he had discovered. 

The mention of Havana led us to speak of Cuba — a 
subject on which every Spaniard is sensitive, and to which 
the present Columbus clings with Spanish pride as the 
last and greatest possession which Spain holds in that far- 
distant land which his forefather was the first to see. He 
said that Spain would never give up Cuba; that no power 
should take it from her, and no money could buy it; that 
she would hold it if it took her last dollar and her last drop 
of blood! 

Turning the conversation to the projected celebration of 
the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America, 
I told him that he ought on that occasion to pay us a visit, 
and see for himself how great was the Western Hemi¬ 
sphere which his ancestor had brought to the knowledge of 
mankind. But he has all a Spaniard’s disinclination to 
leave his own country, and thinks that the celebration 
should be in Spam, from which Columbus sailed, rather 
than in the islands or the continent that he discovered be¬ 
yond the sea. 

I could not but feel that there was a good deal of reason 
in what he said. If there is to be indeed a grand Festival 
of the Nations — a sort of Thanksgiving in which two 
hemispheres unite — is it not fitting that the children 
should go back to the old home and the old hearthstone, 
rather than that the mother country should come to the 
new } However it may be arranged, every one of us must 
desire that Spain should know that America (which ought 
to have been called Columbia in honor of Columbus) does 
not forget what it owes to the great navigator who sailed 


PALOS AND COLUMBUS. 


253 


from her shores, or to the Ferdinand and Isabella who sent 
him forth on his voyage of discovery. 


PALOS AND COLUMBUS.i 

Most American school-boys and school-girls know that 
Columbus sailed from “ Palos in Spain ” to discover 
America. Some of them know that he sailed on the 3d 
of August, 1492. 

When they grow to be men and women, if they look for 
Palos on a good enough map they will not find it. It will 
be on some purely American-manufacture maps. But it 
will not be on the average map. I was in the cabinet of 
one of the first geographers in the world, and he took 
down an excellent map of Spain, on a large scale, authenti¬ 
cated by an official board, and there was no Palos there. 

I had determined to see Palos. And Seville is the point 
of departure for this excursion. On a lovely May day we 
started, — my daughter and I. There is a railway, suffi¬ 
ciently good, built chiefly, or wholly, by a mining company, 
which comes from the valley of the Guadalquivir to that 
of the Tinto, and takes you there. It is a pleasant ride of 
sixty-five miles or thereabouts.' The ride seems tropical 
to us who have never been in the tropics. Orange-trees, 
fig-trees, olive-trees, and vineyards just pushing out their 
fresh green leaves fill the fertile grounds of these valleys. 

We fell into talk with a courteous Spanish gentleman, 
who was most eager to explain what we did not under¬ 
stand. 

1 .Seven Spanish Cities. By Edward E. Hale. Roberts Brothers, Boston, 
1883. 


254 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


The western sun, low in the horizon, is streaming 
through the windows of the car. Our friend is on the 
eastern side; he is looking watchfully across the marshes 
and the river ; and so, as some mound of sand is passed by 
the train and opens a full view to the other side of the 
wide estuary, he raises his hand, points across the marshes 
and says, “ Palo ! ” 

We were all silent for a moment. I think he knew 
something of my feeling. And I—I found I cared for 
Palos more than I had supposed possible. I had crossed 
Spain with the intention of seeing the place. 

But I had not at any time pictured to myself the gulf 
between 1492 and 1882; nor even asked myself to imagine 
Columbus and Martin Pinzon at work on the equipment of 
the ships. On a sudden all the features of the contrast 
presented themselves. Enough, perhaps, that, as we 
dashed on in the comfort of the railway train, we were 
looking across the desolate marshes to the forsaken village 
where hardly a few white houses could be made out, and 
told ourselves that from the enterprise and courage of that 
place the discovery of America became possible. 

The seaport of Palos in the time of Columbus was a 
place so important, that the crew and vessels of the first 
expedition were all gathered there, in face of difficulties 
which the superstition of the time and the terms of the 
voyage presented. 

I do not suppose it to have been a seaport of the first 
class, but it was a considerable and active town. It was 
on the eastern side of the estuary of the Tinto River, a 
considerable stream, known to navigators as far back as 
the first history of navigation. It takes its name Tinto 
from the color which it brings from the copper and iron 


CHARACTERISTICS OF THE TURKS. • 255 

mines above, which are the very mines which gave to 
Spain its interest for Phoenician navigators. 

In nearly four centuries since Columbus’s time the cur¬ 
rent of the river has been depositing silt in what was then 
the port of Palos, and this port is now entirely filled 
up. With the destruction of the harbor the town has gone 
to ruin. The few white specks which my Spanish friend 
pointed out to me, in the light of the evening sun, marked 
the place of the few houses in which a hundred or two poor 
people are living, where were once the dockyards and 
warehouses of the active town. 

The rival town, Huelva, which was, even in Columbus’s 
time, a place of considerable importance, takes all the 
commerce of the estuary. I think not even a fishing-boat 
sails from Palos itself. 


CHARACTERISTICS OF THE TURKS.i 

The Turks have no very marked vices ; no catalogue 
can be made of them. The worst they do is hidden from 
the other people who reside among them. The Koran for¬ 
bids them to play cards for money, and they observe the 
Koran. It commands them not to quarrel and fight, and 
they are scarcely ever arrested, like the burly Englishman, 
for contesting with fist or foot in the street. They never 
blaspheme. There are few cases of murder among them. 
They are too honest to be thieves. They do not regard 
poverty as a reproach, much less as a crime. 

It is the custom of those who pretend to be the censors 

1 Diversions of a Diplomat in Turkey. By S. S. Cox. Charles L. Webster 
and Company, New York, 1887. 


256 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


of morals, to speak of the lack of progressive sagacity of 
the Ottomans. They are called barbaric ; and every das¬ 
tardly act or crime committed by the Christians of the 
Orient — I mean the Greeks, the Italians, the foreigners 
who reside in the Turkish dominion — is attributed to the 
Turk. But I assert that those nations who imagine them¬ 
selves to be very high in the scale of advancement have 
much of democratic-republican liberty to learn from a 
nation which gives every one a fair field of enterprise, and 
opens to the humblest bootblack the office of the Grand 
Vizier. Moreover, when it is said that the courts of ad¬ 
ministration tend to cruel oppression, especially upon the 
peasantry, it will be found that in the main this is not true ; 
and where cases of wrong do occur, they can generally be 
traced directly to the ill-conduct of the governors, who are 
often of another race than the Turkish. 

It has always been the case'in the East, that there has 
been an immense amount of corruption. It is not neces¬ 
sary to apologize for it; and those countries whose criminal 
calendars are choked with vile murders and burglaries and 
wife-beatings, and marital infelicities and infidelities, and 
whose language is brutal and whose insults are coarse, 
are not the nations who should throw stones at the Turk¬ 
ish people. The divorce courts of Berlin, Paris, and Lon¬ 
don give us revelations which the worst that we can 
imagine of the harem cannot equal in sickening detail. 

A French writer, in comparing the Turkish with other 
peoples, praises their justice, impartiality, and religious 
tolerance, and commends the simplicity of their organiza¬ 
tion, the rapidity of their executive work, the facility of 
their resources, the absence of “ red-tape,” and the infor¬ 
malities of their prompt action. 


CHARACTERISTICS OF THE TURKS. 25/ 

There is much habitual simplicity in the Orient. Out 
of this habit springs their hospitality, which is unbounded ; 
and hospitality is but another name for unworldliness. 
Some years ago, in one of the remote Arabian provinces of 
the empire, there was some gold coinage put into circu¬ 
lation. The people had never seen it before. They did 
not like it. They preferred the old white shekels of the 
fathers; and a Yankee captain who came along that coast 
drove a thriving business by trading off old silver coin for 
gold coins of equal size. 

The Turk shows an equable temper and a regular life. 
His religious observances and grave countenance give to 
his habitual reserve, not merely the outward sign, but the 
inward kindness joined with an easy manner. Suppose 
he has the love of ease; suppose he is deficient in our 
ethics and education ; suppose his mental faculties are not 
fully developed and sophisticated ; suppose he does loll 
upon a divan and pass the time with his guests in talking 
of indifferent things ; suppose he is content with his chi¬ 
bouque and coffee, his mosque, bath and repetitious prayers, 
his game of chess or backgammon ; suppose he is eager to 
listen to the old tales, proverbs, and parables, or revels in 
the enjoyment of his astrologies and his pilaf — it may be 
said of him, that when he comes down to work as a me¬ 
chanic or merchant, he is honest and fair in his labor and 
dealings. As a farmer he serenely ploughs his fields and 
reaps his harvests, amid the vicissitudes of his lot and his 
trials with the tax-gatherer. At home he is a model of 
domestic tenderness toward his family, and loyal to his 
sovereign and religion. 

In summing up his character, the qualities of patience, 
candor, contentment and resignation are conspicuous be- 
s 


258 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


yond those of any other race upon the footstool. If the 
religion of the Koran pervades every act of his life, and 
mixes with his every occupation; if his prayer, by its fre¬ 
quent dropping, wears away the stoniness of his heart, still 
he preserves the refinement and hospitality that belong to 
the Orient. He will give to his guests all that he has — 
“ eggs, fruit, coffee, bread, fish, honey with Scio wine, and 
all for love, not money.” 

While here as Minister, I received letters from many 
parts of the United States, inquiring whether Turkey has 
not set an example in regard to the “prohibition” of 
ardent spirits. The answer is: that the Turk, under the 
law of Mahomet, does not drink himself nor sell spirituous 
liquors. 

One of the offices performed by the head of a Turkish 
household is the bringing on his return home, every even¬ 
ing, an offering to his family. • You pass in the streets of 
Pera and Stamboul, toward the going down of the sun, at 
every turn, a Turk going to his house, but always full¬ 
handed. He carries a gift, no matter how trifling; it may 
be a cluster of grapes, a box of sweetmeats or fig paste, or 
a fish, or some fruit or vegetable. This offering is always 
made to his penates. If for a day he should omit it without 
explanation, the females of the harem would be apt to infer 
that a divorce was impending. 

There is something very beautiful about this custom. 
It is not limited to the household. When we left Egypt 
to return to Constantinople, the wife of the Turkish High 
Commissioner sent us a present of rare fruit, including 
pineapples. They were not only done up in a shining 
white napkin, but the napkin itself was covered with a 
rare purple silk handkerchief. The latter still remains as 



A Turkish Family 































































































1/ V 










CHARACTERISTICS OF THE TURKS. 


259 


a souvenir of the signal courtesy of this estimable family 
into whose harem my wife had the pleasure of an entrh. 
Notwithstanding the lapse of time, the fragrance of that 
pineapple still hangs around the elegant fabric in which 
the fruit was ensconced. 

Among other qualities to be mentioned, is the unselfish 
kindliness with which the Turks treat their superiors and 
inferiors. They illustrate, in their daily observance, what 
Sir Thomas More has said so pithily: “To be humble to 
superiors is duty; to equals, is courtesy; to inferiors, no¬ 
bleness ; and to all, safety.” This is both gentle and wise. 
Therefore the Golden Rule is not considered a mere form 
by them ; it is practically illustrated. The richest defers 
to the poorest. Women and children and the weak receive 
protection in every emergency. Parents are reverenced by 
sons, and all the agreeable elements which belong to hospi¬ 
tality find abundant illustration. 

Certainly a people like the Turks cannot be far aloof 
from the best instincts and moralities of our nature. They 
love rural scenery. They seek beautiful spots for the fes¬ 
tival and home. They like commanding points in a land¬ 
scape. Their kiosks, vineyards, and flower-beds are in the 
favored nooks. Their happiness consists greatly in that 
natural joyance which is the essence of country life. 

These are some of the salient features of this race, 
which once horrified mankind, and which occasionally still 
startles them, under fierce provocation. Like the pirates 
and vikings of Norseland, they have been much modified 
by time and circumstance. 


26 o 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


THE CITY OF THE SULTAN.^ 

Constantinople is a city of strange and startling con¬ 
trasts. From the water the eye is delighted with its many 
and varied attractions. Marble palaces, tall towers, beau¬ 
tiful gardens, and magnificent mosques meet the gaze in 
every direction. The glowing sky of the south of Europe 
melts into the soft azure of the Asiatic heavens. The blue 
waters of the Bosphorus, lined with stately palaces, stretch 
out in unsurpassed loveliness until they blend with the 
beautiful waters of the Golden Horn. 

In Constantinople, distance lends enchantment to the 
view. The city which appears so attractive from the water, 
loses its gay and smiling aspect when you enter it. You 
land, perhaps in a fish market, where there is nothing to 
please the eye and everything to offend the nose. Escap¬ 
ing from this, you turn into a graveyard, descend a few 
broken steps, and you find yourself in a public square 
crowded with people, representing every nation of the 
East, and all busy, some changing money, others selling 
fruit, some mending shoes, all cheating if they can. 

Pera is the European quarter of the city. Here the 
language is chiefly French, with a mixture of Italian, 
German, and English. Most of the hotels and shops are 
kept by Frenchmen, and French manners and customs 
prevail. The Grand Rue de Pera, the leading street in 
this section of the city, is so narrow that two carriages 
can scarcely go abreast on it. The cities of the East 

iThe City of the Sultan. By Eugene L. Didier. The Chauiauquan, 
February, 1889. 


THE CITY OF THE SULTAN. 


261 


have no sidewalks, and men, women, dogs, horses, camels, 
and carriages mingle promiscuously in the middle of the 
street. 

Constantinople combines in its varied population the 
people of three continents — Europe, Asia, and Africa,— 
the Orient with all its mystery and magnificence, the West 
with all its dash and energy, Africa with all its fervor and 
fanaticism. You can light your cigar in Europe and shake 
off the ashes in Asia. The bridge of the Sultana Valide 
(Sultan Mother) connects Stamboul with Galata and Pera, 
the Turkish with the European quarter — the civilization 
of the West with the barbarism of the East — in a word, 
progress with stagnation, the nineteenth century with the 
Middle Ages. 

Standing upon this bridge any fair day, a moving pan¬ 
orama is presented, such as can be seen in no other city 
under the sun. People of every nation and every condi¬ 
tion and occupation pass by, from the gorgeous pasha of 
three horse-tails to the beggar in rags and filth. In that 
sedan chair, lined with ivory, sits a rich Armenian lady 
who never walks on the street; immediately behind her 
is an African slave holding his mistress’s pet monkey; a 
slender Greek gentleman dashes by on horseback, followed 
by a Catholic priest on foot ; a Bedouin in a white mantle 
and a Tartar wrapped in sheep-skins are next seen ; a gay 
Turkish carriage, filled with ladies robed in green and vio¬ 
let, rolls along, preceded by a eunuch on horseback, crack¬ 
ing a long whip and crying “ larye ” (make way), for these 
are some of the ladies of the harem. 

Those big bearded men, wearing bear-skin caps and long 
daggers are Circassians; those long-robed figures, with 
their heads covered with gold-striped handkerchiefs, are 


262 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


Syrians ; that solitary man, in a white petticoat, with his 
sash stuffed with pistols, is an Albanian ; that tall, dignified 
gentleman, in black, wearing a silk hat and a clerical collar, 
is an English clergyman, and that hideous woman, uglier 
than the witch of Endor, who runs after him, is a men¬ 
dicant demanding backsheesh; that stately gentleman, 
lounging in an elegant carriage, and followed by his pipe- 
bearer on foot, is a high and mighty pasha. 

And so they pass on, Turks, Greeks, Cossacks, Moors, 
Jews, Egyptians, French dandies, and half-nude Negroes, 
Caucasian beauty and Hottentot deformity, friars, priests, 
dervishes, all people, all colors, and all costumes from that 
of Adam to the last Parisian fashion. 

Constantinople is the most cosmopolitan city in the 
world. You can be shaved by an American barber, have 
your shoes blacked by a Hebrew boy, be bathed by a 
Nubian, be rowed through the,Golden Horn by a Turkish 
boatman, buy fruit from a Syrian, pillau from a Greek, sail 
up the Bosphorus in a steamer commanded by a Dalma¬ 
tian, be driven by an Italian coachman, have your pulse 
felt by an English physician, whose prescription will be 
prepared by a French druggist, and have your teeth filled 
by an American dentist. 

The Turks are the laziest people under the sun, and by 
long experience have become perfect masters of the art of 
killing time. With them the highest earthly bliss is an 
absolute stagnation of mind and body. They eat five 
meals a day, sleep ten hours, and smoke everlastingly. 
The use of wine is forbidden by the Koran, but many of 
them drink secretly, get crazy drunk, beat their wives, 
smash the windows, and break up things generally, just as 
men do in more Christian countries. The Turks eat with 


THE CITY OF THE SULTAN. 


263 


their fingers, for the Koran forbids the use of knives and 
forks. Coffee is a universal drink and is ground fresh 
every time, the milk and sugar being boiled with the 
coffee. 








ASIA. 






SIBERIA’S ENORMOUS TERRITORY AND 
VARIED CLIMATE.^ 


Very few Americans, if I may judge from the questions 
asked me, fully grasp and appreciate the fact that Siberia 
is virtually a continent in itself, and presents continental 
diversities of climate, scenery, and vegetation. We are apt, 
unconsciously, to assume that because a country is gen¬ 
erally mapped upon a small scale it must necessarily 
occupy only a small part of the surface of the globe ; but 
the conclusion does not follow from the premises. 

Siberia has an extreme range of about 37 degrees, or 2500 
miles, in latitude, and 130 degrees, or 5000 miles in longi¬ 
tude. Even these bare statements give one an impression 
of vast geographical extent ; but their significance may be 
emphasized by means of a simple illustration. If it were 
possible to move entire countries from one part of the 
globe to another, you could take the whole United States 
of America, from Maine to California, and from Lake 
Superior to the Gulf of Mexico, and set it down in the 
middle of Siberia without touching anywhere the boun¬ 
daries of the latter territory. You could then take Alaska 
and all the States of Europe, with the single exception of 
Russia, and fit them into the remaining margin like the 
pieces of a dissected map ; and after having thus accom¬ 
modated all of the United States, including Alaska, and 
all of Europe, except Russia, you would still have more 


1 Century Magazine for June, 1888. By George Kennan. 
267 


268 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


than 300,000 square miles of Siberian territory to spare — 
or, in other words, you would still leave unoccupied in 
Siberia an area half as large again as the Empire of Ger¬ 
many. 

The single province of Tobolsk, which in comparison 
with the other Siberian provinces, ranks only fourth in 
size, exceeds in area all of our Northern States from Maine 
to Iowa taken together. The province of Yeniseisk is 
larger than all of the United States east of the Missis¬ 
sippi River, and the province of Yakutsk is thirteen times 
as large as Great Britian, thirty-four times as large as the 
State of Pennsylvania, and might be cut up into 188 such 
States as Massachusetts, and yet Yakutsk is only one of 
eleven Siberian provinces. 

It is hardly necessary to say that a country which has 
an area of five and a half million square miles, and which 
extends in latitude as far as from the southern extremity 
of Greenland to the island of Cuba, must present great 
diversities of climate, topography, and vegetation, and can¬ 
not be everywhere a barren arctic waste. A mere glance 
at the map is sufficient to show that a considerable part 
of Western Siberia lies further south than Nice, Venice, or 
Milan, and that the southern boundary of the Siberian 
province of Semirechinsk is nearer the equator than 
Naples. 

In a country which thus stretches from the latitude of 
Italy to the latitude of Central Greenland one would natu¬ 
rally expect to find, and as a matter of fact one does find, 
many varieties of climate and scenery. In some parts of 
the province of Yakutsk the mean temperature of the 
month of January is more than 50 degrees below zero, 
Fahrenheit, while in the province of Semipalatinsk the 


A WOOD-CUTTER IN THE FORESTS OF SIBERIA. 269 

mean temperature of the month of July is 72 degrees 
above; and such maximum temperatures as 95 and 100 
degrees in the shade are comparatively common. 

On the Taimyr peninsula, east of the Gulf of Ob, the 
permanently frozen ground thaws out in summer to the 
depth of only a few inches, and supports but a scanty 
vegetation of berry bushes and moss, while in the southern 
part of Western Siberia watermelons and cantaloupes are a 
profitable crop, tobacco is grown upon thousands of plan¬ 
tations, and the peasants harvest annually more than fifty 
million bushels of grain. 

The fact which I desire especially to impress upon the 
mind of the reader is that Siberia is not everywhere 
uniform and homogeneous. The northern part of the 
country differs from the southern part quite as much as 
the Hudson Bay territory differs from Kentucky; and it 
is as great a mistake to attribute the cold and barrenness 
of the Lena delta to the whole of Siberia, as it would be 
to attribute the cold and barrenness of King William Land 
to the whole of North America. 


A WOOD-CUTTER IN THE FORESTS OF 
SIBERIA.i 

It is generally understood that many of the political 
arrests in Russia and banishments to Siberia have been 
quietly and secretly done by the government, in some 
cases, as asserted, the victims disappearing so suddenly as 

1 Britons and Muscovites. By CuRTis Guild. Lee and Shepard, Bos¬ 
ton, 1888. 


270 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


to leave no clew, even to friends and relatives, of their 
whereabouts. 

The worst feature of some of these political arrests is 
that many who are suspected of conspiracy against the 
government are subjected to imprisonment, and often 
have the greatest difficulty in communicating with their 
friends, while others who have innocently transacted busi¬ 
ness with Nihilists or conspirators, not knowing them as 
such, are torn from home and friends, and, if we can 
believe English accounts, given no opportunity to know 
what charges are made against them or opportunity to 
disprove them. 

A recent case was recorded by a correspondent of the 
Lcva 7 tt Herald of the strange meeting of a learned pro¬ 
fessor in the wilds of Siberia by one of his former stu¬ 
dents, who, as a civil engineer, was in Central Asia for 
some time. 

The monotony of his residence in those remote prov¬ 
inces was broken by an occasional hunting expedition into 
Siberia. On one of these trapping expeditions, which in¬ 
cluded a young member of one of the grand-ducal fam¬ 
ilies, the party was one evening belated in a pine forest 
and at some distance from the day’s bivouac. They were 
utterly astray. A stentorian view-halloo, reverberating 
through the silent recesses of the forest depths, brought 
to the assistance and guidance of the party a wood-cutter 
— an old man of some threescore years, with tangled 
locks, coarse caftan, and bark-swathed feet. Under the 
old man’s guidance, the party found a rude hut, a charcoal 
fire, and some simple cooking-utensils. 

The engineer noticed that the old wood-cutter, when 
unobserved, scanned his face rather attentively. He took 


A WOOD-CUTTER IN THE FORESTS OF SIBERIA. 2/1 

a quiet opportunity of asking the old man if he observed 
in him any resemblance to some one he had previously 
known. 

“ A very strong resemblance,” was the reply. “ Were 
you not some fifteen years ago a student of the Richelev- 
ski Gymnase in Odessa ? ” 

The engineer answered affirmatively. 

“And do you remember Professor- ? ” 

“ Certainly; he was a man beloved by every student in 
his class. I shall always remember kindly the amiable 
and learned professor who disappeared so suddenly and 
mysteriously from Odessa. But what do you know of 
him ” 

The old wood-cutter for the first time smiled. The 
heavy moustache and beard had hidden the lines of the 
mouth in repose. The young engineer had not forgotten 
the peculiarly sad sweetness of his old professor’s smile. 
The ragged and picturesque wood-cutter and the former 
learned professor of Sanscrit and comparative philology 
were the same. 

“The rencontre,” continues the correspondent, “was, 
under the circumstances, naturally at once both pleasant 
and painful to my friend, to whose immediate and anxious 
inquiries the old man replied sadly : — 

“‘All God’s will, my boy. As to the suddenness and 
mystery of my disappearance from Odessa, the secret 
police might have explained. Nothing beyond an un¬ 
founded suspicion of disaffection to our Little Father and 
a preposterous charge of disseminating a revolutionary 
doctrine, have sent me to this lifelong banishment. But I 
do not repine. I have sufficient philosophy left to apply 
myself to the felling of pine-trees with the same zest as 



2/2 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


that with which I formerly delighted to pursue a knotty 
philological problem. 

“ ‘ Am I not wise in my generation and old age ? I am 
deprived of the sight and companionship of old friends, 
but God gives me health and a portion of contentment. 
My masters pay me with but few unkind words and two 
roubles a week. My old Odessa pupils paid me six roubles 
an hour. But what of that ? I have sufficient. Some¬ 
times old memories draw tightly round the heart and give 
me infinite pain. Then I swing my heavy adze with 
greater force and endeavor to forget. It is to me a joy to 
look upon the still youthful face of my old pupil, but do 
not probe my heart, child. I ask you not to speak to me 
at parting. You were always obedient, and you hear me. 
God keep you ! Good-by ! ’ ” 

The old man would not allow the friend to convey any 
messages to relatives or acquaintances, who, he said, had 
probably long since forgotten his existence, so that noth¬ 
ing could be done beyond an affectionate pressure of the 
hand, without a word, at leave-taking. 

How many others are there like the old professor, men 
also of birth, breeding, and brilliant intellectual parts, 
languishing out their lives in the dreary wilds of Siberia 
for a baseless suspicion ? The reflection is saddening, and 
it also comes home to us after inspecting the laboriously 
cut and elegantly carved pillars of churches, from stone of 
almost adamantine hardness, pedestals, stone steps, pedi¬ 
ments, columns, and other work from Siberian quarries. 

For one thinks that this beautiful work, that represents 
years of painful and careful application, may have been 
wrought with aching hearts and washed by the hopeless 
tears of those longing for the sight of loved ones and far- 
distant home. 


EXCHANGING CALLS IN TEHERAN. 


273 


EXCHANGING CALLS IN TEHERAN.i 

The afternoon or the early morning is the time when 
the gentlemen of Teheran exchange calls ; never in the 
evening. A Persian gentleman never calls on a Persian 
lady; he does not even venture to inquire after her health, 
or even to mention her to her husband. But after her 
death it is proper to call on the male relatives of the 
deceased, to express condolence. A father or a brother 
may visit a daughter or sister, unless forbidden by the 
husband. Notwithstanding these restrictions, the exchange 
of visits among ladies, or among gentlemen, is a common 
custom in Teheran, and is a most formidable affair, afford¬ 
ing a complete display of the elaborate etiquette for which 
Persia has always been famous. All the ceremonies attend¬ 
ing such a visit are shaded down to the finest point, and 
form part of the education of every Persian, becoming in 
fact a second nature to him. 

Before making a social call, a servant is sent (generally 
the previous day) to announce it. The rank of the servant 
who is sent is suited to the rank of the gentleman who is 
to receive the visit. If a person of very high degree is to 
call on one of similar position, it is considered eminently 
proper to announce and accept the visit in an autograph 
note. If the caller be of the higher rank, he simply states 
that he proposes to call at such an hour ; if of equal or 
lower rank, he asks permission to call. The call must be 
made on horseback or in a carriage, and the number of 

1 Persia and the Persians. By S. G. W. Benjamin. Houghton, Mifflin and 
Company, Boston, 1887. 

T 


274 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


mounted attendants depends on the rank of the person 
visited. 

On approaching the house the visitor, if of high rank, is 
met by mounted heralds, who immediately return at full 
speed to announce the approach of the guest. If the host 
be of very high rank, he will try sometimes to see the effect 
on his guest of coming into the reception-room after the 
arrival of the guest. Supposing he has not tried such a 
manoeuvre, a courteous skirmish occurs when the guest 
enters the doors ; each seeks to outdo the other in polite¬ 
ness, while each is exceedingly careful not to accept or 
allow a position to which he is not entitled by rank. 

The corner of the room the most remote from the entrance 
is the place of honor; the guest, if he outranks the host, 
while strenuously declining to take that seat, will be very 
careful that his host does not occupy it instead, and quite 
as careful not to accept it if 'inferior in rank, although 
urged, for to do so under such circumstances would be to 
affront the host and invite an affront in return. 

The host when in the apartment on the arrival of the 
guest, advances outside of the door of the reception-room 
to receive one of superior rank ; meets him at the door if 
of equal rank, and leads him by the hand to his seat; goes 
half way the length of the apartment to meet one of 
slightly inferior rank, but does not condescend to advance 
a step for a guest far below in social or official position. 
When the host and guest are of equal rank, chairs or cush¬ 
ions are arranged in corresponding position opposite the 
refreshment table, and so on through all the various social 
grades. Other things being equal, the left hand, and not 
the right, is the place of honor. 

The serving of refreshments is another important ques- 


EXCHANGING CALLS IN TEHERAN. 


275 

tion regulated by undeviating custom. The nazir, or 
head-steward of the household, enters in his stocking feet, 
ushering a number of servants equal to the number to be 
served. If host and guest be of equal rank, the cup is 
presented to each at exactly the same moment; but if one 
outranks the other, he is first served. When there is pres¬ 
ent a member of the royal family, or one of the cabinet, or 
council of the Shah, or a foreign minister, the servants 
must always retire backward to the door. 

The number and character of the refreshments depend 
on the rank, the hour, and the season. In the morning 
tea is served once. In the afternoon the guest, being of 
equal or higher rank, is first served with tea in dainty 
glasses. This is followed by the kalian, or water pipe. 
When several persons of equal rank are to be served, it is 
the proper thing to bring an equal number of lighted 
pipes ; but if one present outranks all the others, only 
one pipe is brought in, which is handed to him. Before 
smoking, he makes a feint of offering it‘in turn to all 
present, but woe to him who incautiously accepts before 
he of higher rank has smoked, for in that case he will be 
made to feel the withering scorn of which a Persian gentle¬ 
man is capable. 

The Mestofi-mamolek, the highest official in Persia 
after the King, has not smoked for forty years. He took 
a solemn resolution against tobacco, because, when a 
young man, the kalian was on one occasion given in his 
presence to a man whom he considered of lower rank, 
before it was offered to him. When the pipe was pre¬ 
sented to him he dashed it aside, and swore never to 
smoke again, in order to avoid the possibility of being 
a second time subjected to such an affront. 


2/6 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


After the first kalian, tea is served again, followed by 
a second pipe. After a proper interval, the length of 
which is regulated by the acceptability of the visit, coffee 
is served in tiny cups, followed in turn by the pipe. 
This is the signal that the limit of the entertainment has 
been reached, and now the guest in honeyed words 
expresses his acknowledgment for the courtesy of the 
host, and requests permission to depart. 

When the Persian New Year begins, with the spring 
equinox, the season is indicated by the substitution of 
a cool sherbet for the first cup of tea, and sometimes 
of an ice in the place of coffee; but after the September 
equinoctial, the tea and coffee are resumed. 

These may seem trivial matters, but in Persia, they 
have great weight ; and not only is the taste of the host 
indicated by the quality and the style of the refreshments, 
but the savoir-faire and the rank of the guest are weighed 
by his bearing on such an occasion. It is of no slight 
importance that a European in Persia should understand 
the force of these laws of etiquette, otherwise he is liable 
to have his breeding as a gentleman misunderstood; 
while by strongly asserting his claim to all the privileges 
which he has the right to demand, suitable to his rank, 
he receives the respect which is his due, but which no 
Persian will give except when he sees him firm on these 
points. 


I 






Persian Woman 







































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































DOMESTIC CUSTOMS IN TEHERAN. 


277, 


DOMESTIC CUSTOMS IN TEHERAN.i 

There is one phase of life in Persia, of which even he 
who lives years in that country knows little or sees less, — 
a state of mystery, a system hidden in the midst of a city 
busy and apparently open to the widest publicity. I refer 
to the domestic customs of Persia, and the mode of exist¬ 
ence followed by women in that land of romance and song. 
Without woman, how can there be romance and song ; and 
where are the women of Teheran ; and how is the poet 
who would sing their praises to see and appreciate the 
charms that quicken the chords of his lyre ? Yet at Te¬ 
heran one sees but rarely the face of a woman unless she 
be a Nestorian, an Armenian, or a Guebre, of whom all go 
but slightly disguised. 

Every Persian house is constructed upon a plan of secrecy. 
No windows are visible from the streets ; but the interior 
is constructed around several courts, with lovely gardens, 
tanks, shrubbery, and even luxuriant groves of fruit and 
shade trees, of all which one obtains not the slightest hint 
from the street. In the main dwelling the master of the 
house lives and transacts business during the day; but his 
business over, he retires for the night to his Anderoon, 
which is the quarter or the residence devoted to the 
women. 

The Anderoon is jealously guarded by the eunuch, and 
no man ever enters it save the proprietor. When he is 
there in the bosom of his family, he cannot be disturbed ; 

1 Persia and the Persians. By S. G. W. Benjamin. Houghton, Mifflin 
and Company, Boston, 1887. 


278 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


it is sufficient to say to anyone who inquires for him, “He 
is in his Anderoon.” This is an asylum from outward cares 
which it would be well to import into the United States 
for those who seek effectual quiet and repose. To the 
Persian it takes the place of a club, — the more so as 
clubs, theatres, and other places for evening resort are not 
permitted in Persia. 

The influence of the women is alone sufficient to prevent 
the establishment of institutions which would result in a 
complete reversal of the present domestic system. Know¬ 
ing nothing better, and being accustomed to and satisfied 
with matters as they are, the women of Persia are content 
to have the present domestic system continue. 

It would be a mistake hastily to conclude that this indi¬ 
cates a low order of intellect or an abject spirit among the 
Persian women. If uneducated according to our ideas, 
they are, from all I gather, by no means stupid, and enjoy 
an influence and controlling power in domestic and state 
affairs not inferior to that of women elsewhere, only it 
finds its expression by different methods. 

It is not the semblance of power that is to be feared, 
but the unseen power behind the throne ; and I can affirm 
emphatically that in no country do women have more of such 
power than in Persia. Women of great talents are occa¬ 
sionally found in the Anderoons, skilled in music, poetry, 
and painting, and in the diplomatic art. All of them are 
clever in embroidering, which has been carried in Persia 
to a decree never elsewhere surpassed. 

Diplomacy, intrigue, and influence in that country are 
dependent in a large measure on the force of character 
displayed by the women. If a man wishes to influence 
another in an affair of importance, he manages it by con- 


DOMESTIC CUSTOMS IN TEHERAN. 


279 


fiding the matter to one or all of his wives, who in turn 
visit the wives of the man to be influenced, or the wives 
of one who has influence over him, and by urging and 
presents seek to obtain their object. Many important 
transactions in Persia are conducted in this manner. 

The profound disguise worn by the women of Teheran 
in the street, supposed by foreigners to be a serious incon¬ 
venience, is, under existing conditions, of very great advan¬ 
tage, and the women themselves would be the last to 
advocate a change so long as polygamy exists. No argu¬ 
ment is required to show what a power for intrigue exists 
in such a costume. In her mantle or veil, completely 
covering her from head to foot, a woman can go wherever 
she pleases without the slightest possibility of her identity 
being detected. Not even her husband would dare to 
raise her veil ; to do so would render him liable to instant 
death. On the other hand, if a Persian .woman wishes to 
j disclose her charms to any one, she generally contrives to 
I find a chance to withdraw her veil for an instant ; the rest 
• is arranged by third parties, who are always on hand. 

The women of Teheran can thus go anywhere with little 
risk of detection ; only the wives of the Shah and of his 
sons are debarred the privilege, never going abroad without 
numerous attendants. The former are always accompanied 
by the royal guards, who, at a certain distance before and 
behind the royal ladies, keep the way clear. When these 
ladies propose to leave the palace, the event is announced 
by heralds in all the streets by which they are to pass; 
the shops are closed, and every one is expected to take him¬ 
self out of the way. Until recently it was impossible, for 
this reason, to construct windows overlooking the principal 
avenues, and any unlucky person found in the passage of 



28 o 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


the royal cortege was put to death on the spot. But the 
most that could now happen would probably be that he 
might be severely handled, even if he turned his face to the 
wall. 

There could hardly be a greater contrast than between 
the out-of-door and the in-door costume of the ladies of 
Teheran. The latter was formerly more modest than it is 
at present, but another fashion came in with the present 
century, — which, like the costume of short clothes worn 
by men in the last century in Europe, requires a good 
figure to show it off to advantage. The scant garments 
worn in-doors admit of considerable scope in the exercise of 
taste for color and embroidery, but otherwise there is no 
difference in the home dress worn by the Persian women 
of Teheran either in the palace or the meanest hovel. 


AN ILLUSTRATION.! 

I CAN best illustrate the radical differences between the 
Oriental and the Occidental by two or three typical inci¬ 
dents. The Mehmendar, or entertainer of the guests of 
the Shah, who received me on arriving in Persia, and 
accompanied me to the capital, was a man of agreeable 
disposition. He had lived many years in Europe ; he spoke 
French with facility, and his manners were easy and grace¬ 
ful. 

On brief acquaintance, one would have set him down as 
a gentleman comparing favorably with gentlemen and men 
of affairs in Europe ; and it was easy to believe that he 

1 Persia and the Persians. By S. G. W. Benjamin. Houghton, Mifflin 
and Company, Boston, 1887. 


AN ILLUSTRATION. 


281 


would resent any attempt to present him with a trifling 
gift as a recompense for the services he rendered officially 
for his government, and for which he had presumably been 
compensated by the Shah. 

This would have been the conclusion reached by one 
unacquainted with Oriental character ; but my experience 
in the East led me to think otherwise. I felt that it would 
be safer to venture to offer him an official tip than to risk 
offending him by showing too much delicacy in the matter. 
On arriving at Teheran, I therefore presented him with a 
new saddle and bridle I had brought with me. He showed 
not the slightest hesitation at the proposal of such a pres¬ 
ent, but returned the saddle after inspection, on the plea 
that it was shop-worn, and that out of respect to me he 
would prefer not to show to his friends a gift that seemed 
to be unworthy of a Minister of the United States. 

As the saddle was entirely new and in perfectly good 
condition, I saw at once that his object was to receive a 
more valuable present, possibly in the shape of money. I 
therefore sent the saddle back to him with a message that 
I did not need instructions as to what kind of a present I 
should give, and that he ought to be thankful that I had 
remembered him at all. A European gentleman, who 
might have been Consul for ten years, and held the rank 
of General and Receiver of the Royal Guests, to whom 
such a message should be sent, would probably reply with 
a challenge ; but I had not mistaken the Oriental character. 
The saddle was accepted with a profusion of thanks. 

A similar case was that of a prominent official at Ta- 
breez. He had an altercation with an English gentle¬ 
man, and repeatedly called the other a liar to his face. 
The Englishman, who seemed not to be acquainted with 


282 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


Oriental character, sent him a note demanding either an 
apology or that he should accept a challenge to fight. 
The Persian was not a coward,—few Persians are pol¬ 
troons— but the idea of risking his life because he had 
called another man a liar seemed to him preposterous, as it 
would to some Europeans and Americans as well, who 
do not accept the absurdities of the duellist’s code. 

“I fight!” said he; “what shall I fight for.? I only 
called him a liar, and now he wants me to fight him ; never 
was anything more absurd.” 

“ Well,” said the gentleman who took the note to him, 
“ he says you will have to fight him ; there is no way of 
getting out of it. It will never do to call an English 
gentleman a liar.” 

“ But say I won’t fight,” replied the other. 

“ Then you must apologize.” 

“ Apologize ! what does he mean by apologizing.? ” 

“ Why, take it all back, and say that you are sorry that 
you called him a liar, —that is what it means.” 

“ Is that all.? ” replied the Persian. “ Of course I’ll 
apologize; I’ll say whatever he wishes me to say. I lied 
when I called him a liar. I am a liar, the son of a liar, 
and the grandson of a liar. What more does he want me 
to say.? ” 

SOME FACTS ABOUT CHINA AND THE 
CHINESE.i 

The traveller is disappointed by what he encounters at 
first in the “ Flowery Kingdom,” and further acquaintance 

1 From Japan to Granada. By James H. Chapin. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 
New York, 1889. 


SOME FACTS ABOUT CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 283 

with the country and the people does not wholly efface the 
first impression. 

In the first place, the country does not show for what 
it really is. The broad, flat surface as one approaches 
Shanghai suggests swamps and sedges rather than fruits or 
grains ; the high, abrupt, and barren bluffs that invest the 
harbor of Hong Kong, effectually concealing the entrance 
till we are fairly in it, are more suggestive of the haunts 
of pirates than of lawful enterprise; while the reeking 
atmosphere of Cochin China makes it the breeding-place 
of fevers and the haunt of myriads of insects that make 
life itself a very burden. 

Then the sharp contrast between Western civilization 
and the Oriental type, as it appears in the great cities of 
China, is most disastrous to any sentimental ideas we may 
have entertained of the native simplicity, together with 
the high art and refined tastes of the Eastern races. 
Here are the two in immediate juxtaposition, if not min¬ 
gled together in the same quarter or along the same 
streets. 

Shanghai is said to be the best single point in the king¬ 
dom for making these contrasts, since the foreign is sep¬ 
arated from the Chinese section only by an ancient brick 
wall, with gates and towers, that dates from the sixteenth 
century. The wall is now kept in moderate repair, and 
might serve a useful purpose in case of a popular uprising 
of the Mongols against their European neighbors. On 
the one side is the evident thrift of a commercial colony, 
with its substantial buildings and well-kept streets, while 
the consulates and other official residences, often embow¬ 
ered with trees and bright with flowers, give it an air of 
genuine respectability. 


284 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


On the side of the natives are narrow crooked streets, 
filled with decaying garbage and nameless offal, and lined 
with tumble-down rookeries of bamboo houses, or huts of 
soft brick, in which a multitude of men, women, and children 
lounge or huddle in strange companionship. There can 
be little opportunity for privacy, and apparently the people 
see little occasion for it. They come and go along the 
crowded streets, and above the gutters that reek in filth 
and fill the air with pestilential vapors, without the least 
appearance of inconvenience or discontent. 

To such life they were born, in such conditions they 
have lived, and with such surroundings they will die. 
There is evidently no dearth of population. Indeed, every 
building and every street swarms with life, and the wonder 
is how so many can be housed in so small a space. There 
is apparently no attempt to improve the buildings or erect 
others, so long as the old will hold together. 

It is characteristic of the Chinese towns that nothing 
seems to be built with any view to permanence. Sufficient 
to the day is the evil thereof, and they do not trouble 
themselves as to what shall be to-morrow, much less how 
it will fare with the generations that shall come after. 

As with the houses or the towns, so with the various 
articles of personal or household use. When an article 
becomes absolutely worthless it is cast into the street, to 
add to the unseemly heaps of refuse that already defile 
and obstruct the way. The first visit the traveller makes 
to the Chinese quarter of a city in the “ Flowery Kingdom ” 
will effectually dispel any idea that the name was sug¬ 
gested by the thing it represents. 

Peking, the imperial capital, is reputed to be the filthiest 
city in the world, and is probably entitled to that unsavory 


SOME FACTS ABOUT CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 285 

distinction. It is encircled by a stately wall some forty 
feet in height, and this pierced by arched gateways ^nd 
surrounded by a wide moat, the terminus of the grand 
canal, which has for centuries connected the capital with 
other important cities of the Empire. The city is of very 
ancient date; the buildings in that part accessible to the 
public wear a forlorn and neglected aspect, as if they had 
never been repaired or painted ; the streets are unpaved, 
and after a long rain, ankle-deep in mud, and when it is 
added that there is no system of sewerage, it will be easily 
imagined what a nest of foul odors it must be. 

Some attempts at sanitary regulations are made by 
foreign residents, at the embassies, and also by the mis¬ 
sionaries, but such improvements as they devise are looked 
upon rather with suspicion than with favor. The quarter 
of the city set apart for the imperial residence is not open 
to foreigners or to natives below a certain rank, and we 
cannot therefore speak of it with confidence ; but in point 
of sanitary condition, it is said to be little improvement on 
the rest. 

Hong Kong produces a more favorable impression, and 
as approached from the sea the situation is really pictu¬ 
resque. There are substantial buildings for commercial 
purposes along the main street, — Victoria Road,—and 
many attractive residences, ranging tier above tier, along 
the steep slopes of Victoria peak, which rises rapidly 
almost from the water’s edge. 

Then there are some charming suburbs, with a bewilder¬ 
ing variety of shrubs and flowers, both native and exotic. 
Happy Valley, two or three miles out, is given up in part 
to the cemetery and partly to the race-course; rather 
incongruous neighbors perhaps, but each is made attractive 
in its way. 


286 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


Hong Kong is a,n English colony, and occupies an island 
takhn as a sort of indemnity for injuries inflicted upon the 
English while forcing the opium trade upon China. 

It has a considerable English population, with represent¬ 
atives of many other nations, and a large contingent of 
native Chinamen, who live in Chinese fashion, like bees in 
a hive, and during the morning hours, when the fishing 
sampans and market boats are coming in, make the water 
front a very babble of confusion. The stranger makes no 
doubt there is a riot going on, and wonders whether he had 
better run away or remain and take his chances with the 
rest. But he soon learns it is only the vociferous way 
these Celestials have of informing the public they have 
fish or cabbages to sell. 

Leaving Hong Kong by steamer, either day or night, we 
are carried up the Chu-Kiang, or Pearl River, ninety 
miles to Canton, the most exclusively Chinese of all the 
Chinese cities readily accessible from the coast. Here 
the leading features of Shanghai are repeated and in some 
respects intensified. Here are the narrow streets, the 
crooked lanes, the swarming multitudes, and the ancient 
odors so characteristic of a Chinese town. 

One thing the traveller will have noticed soon after 
starting from Hong Kong — a rack of rifles or similar 
arms, a dozen pieces perhaps, in the main saloon and near 
the companion-way leading to the lower deck. They are 
loaded and ready for use, easily accessible to officers and 
passengers, and intended as a means of defence in case 
of attack by river pirates, or a possible uprising of the 
Chinese crew. 

Canton is situated on both sides of the Pearl River, 
about a hundred miles from the open sea, and includes 


SOME FACTS ABOUT CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 28 / 

also an island in the river, now largely given up to foreign 
residents. As approached from below, it has the appear¬ 
ance of a vast extent of low barracks, with here and there 
a building rising above the rest, and in the distance the 
great pagoda on Kun Yam hill, which stands on the city 
wall and rises five stories high. 

To get any adequate idea of the city it is best to take 
a chair or kago, with a relay of sturdy coolies, and a native 
guide. One might as well expect to make his way through 
a tropical jungle and reach camp at a given hour, as to 
make his way alone through the labyrinthine tangle of 
Cantonese streets. The untrodden wilderness is not more 
alike, one part with another, than the long, narrow wind¬ 
ing, endless lanes of this city, of more than a million 
people. 

A quarter of a million people live on boats on the river, 
which cluster five to six deep at night for miles along 
either shore. These are the homes of these people, and 
most of them never knew any other. These boats are not 
reserved for domestic use entirely, but ply up and down 
the river all day long, and sometimes far into the night, 
for any chance business that may fall in the way; the 
women and children even being expert at the oars, and 
anxious to earn a penny whenever occasion offers. 

We first crossed the river in one of these house boats ; 
one comely young woman presiding at the helm, and 
another handling the oars, and deftly working a way 
among the innumerable boats that crowd the surface of 
the river. The fee is about eight cents each, paid to the 
oarsman, and being in generous mood, we pass a small 
gratuity to the pilot also. 

We start in a broad, pleasant street, in front of the 


288 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


American Consulate, but plunge almost immediately into 
a low arcade, that runs off in every direction into byways 
of narrow, crooked streets. We are interested to know 
what is done by this army of men, women, and children, 
sailors, priests, and beggars; what articles they manu¬ 
facture ; what they sell, and in brief how they all get 
a living. 

Here is a silk-mercer’s shop with fabrics, of every hue 
and pattern from the Chinese looms, displayed in every 
imaginable shape, to win the attention and attract pur¬ 
chasers. There are also delicate embroideries, wrought 
patiently by men, for wages that in other nations would 
scarcely serve to keep body and soul together. Then 
come dealers in lacquer-ware and beautiful black-wood 
furniture, intended especially for the foreign element and 
the wealthy classes. 

On another street are the leather workers, and dealers 
in yellow shoes of Chinese pattern, that turn up at the 
toes like Russian sledges; tea-shops and restaurants, with 
great gilt signs in illegible Chinese characters; shops that 
make a specialty of bird’s-nest gelatine, and others where 
canaries and other singing birds are sold. Longevity 
Lane brings us to the dealers in precious stones and 
to workers in ivory, jade, and gypsum; while the street 
of Heavenly Peace is distinguished by a large shop devoted 
to the manufacture of palm-leaf fans. 

We pass through several markets; one in particular 
arrests our attention, and we stop for an inspection. The 
stories of the toy books years ago, touching certain articles 
of food in the Celestial Empire, have been indignantly 
denied. But it is no use — the story books were right. 
On the bench within arm’s length of us is an unmistakable 




Chinese Family at a Meal 






















































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































SOME FACTS ABOUT CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 289 

representative of the canine race, tail and all, but with 
skin stripped off from tip to tip. We did not inquire for 
cats, but they were there, though the novice may not 
always distinguish a cat from a squirrel, when both fur 
and skin are gone. The Chinaman’s chief article of food 
is rice, and next is fish, sometimes very stale at that, and 
many of them cannot afford meat at all, even of the 
canine variety. 

Unlike the Hindoo, or even his near neighbor, the 
Japanese, the Chinaman delights in pork, and a roast pig 
is a prime necessity at a great festival. 

Passing along the street of Benevolence our attention is 
arrested by a screeching of wind instrument and a clatter 
of drums from a side alley. It proves to be a funeral, and 
we pause to let the procession pass. In front are two men 
bearing a trailing banner, and followed by the musicians 
with the screeching instruments. The bearers come next 
with the coffin, a characteristic piece of work, consisting of 
a log divided and hollowed out, and then neatly matched 
together. Next come the professional mourners, men 
who make a business of sorrow, and whose services are 
always at command. They save much lachrymal demon¬ 
stration on the part of the family, and are therefore in 
much request. The chief mourner in this case was an 
adept in his art. He wailed aloud and sobbed piteously, 
and wrung his hands, while his eyes and nose both 
flowed abundantly. He had been hired for the occasion, 
and meant to do his duty faithfully and well. Then 
came the family, in the white garments indicative of 
mourning, and a few immediate friends, and the procession 
was pieced out by such stragglers as happened to be on the 
street. 


u 


290 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


Men are beasts of burden in the “Flowery Kingdom.” 
They swing great weights on poles, and transport them 
across the country. They carry the kago and the palan¬ 
quin, the usual means of transportation for travellers. 
They carry coal in wheelbarrows for hundreds of miles 
south of the Hwang-Ho River, and the man who guides a 
barrow holds a higher position, socially, than the one who 
only swings a pole. 

Few of the Chinese coolies or common laborers are over¬ 
fed, and many of them are extremely poor. There are few, 
however, who rebel against the fates, or ever expect to be 
otherwise than they are. There is a sort of content, born 
of Chinese fatalism, disastrous to any wise ambition, and 
generally fatal to any progress. It cannot be justly said 
the Chinese as a race are indolent. They are among the 
most industrious and most frugal people in the world. 
But they lack opport\mity, and have neither the nerve nor 
courage to push out into new fields of enterprise, except it 
be for a little time, and then, with the expectation of 
returning to the old haunts, and presumably to the old 
ways. ' 


THE JAPANESE.i 

The Japanese are among the happiest nations of the 
world. They are called the children of the Orient, and 
however hard be their life’s pathway they smooth it with 
smiles. Laughter lives with them, slight misfortunes pass 
away with a giggle, and sorrow finds its abiding place in 
other lands. Good natured but not frivolous, their beau- 

1 The Japanese at Play. By Frank G. Carpenter. The Cosmopolitan 
for January, 1889. 


THE JAPANESE. 


291 


tiful country is the paradise of travellers, and I have yet 
to find the first American who has spent any time in Japan 
who does not speak well of the land and its people. 

The climate is that of the warm southern sun of Italy. 
The skies are as blue as those of the Mediterranean, and 
the Japanese sunsets outrival those of Naples in their glori¬ 
ous coloring.. All Nature smiles in her efforts to make 
the land beautiful. The warm moist air of the western 
Pacific covers the thirty-eight hundred islands which make 
up the Japanese Empire with verdure as green as that of 
Egypt in winter, and the rocks, bluffs, and mountains 
which in other lands are naked and ragged are here 
clothed in green velvet and embroidered with flowers. 
It is no wonder that the Japanese leave their native land 
with longing, and that when away they do not rest until 
their return. They are not among the colonizing and emi¬ 
grating peoples of the earth, and they at heart love Japan 
as the Italians love Italy. 

After two months in Japan, in which time I have mixed 
with all classes of the people, I have been struck with their 
wonderful good nature, and their capacity for getting pleas¬ 
ure out of the little things of this life. The love of friends 
and of family is stronger among them than among most 
other peoples, and though the houses are entirely open to 
the street, and the various operations of the family may be 
seen by every passer-by, I have yet to see the first domes¬ 
tic brawl, or to hear the first angry word between parent 
and child, or husband and wife. 

The amusements of the people are many, and one sees 
parties of men, women, and children playing at “Go,” 
which is a kind of Japanese chess or checkers. It is 
played with boxes of little round bone buttons for checks, 


292 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


and it may be called the great household game of the peo¬ 
ple. Family parties play at it in their homes. The coolies 
spread a mat on the streets, and bet on “ Go ” during the 
intervals of their work, and old grandmothers and little 
children stand about and pass their judgment on the moves 
of the players. 

The Japanese are very kind to their poor, and I suppose 
the average of comfort, in accordance with the ideas of the 
people, is as high in Japan as anywhere else in the world. 
There are many poor, but few paupers. During the time 
I have spent in the country I have not met a half dozen 
beggars, and the poor seem to enjoy life as well as the 
rich. 

The better class of Japanese have become fond of horse¬ 
racing within the past few years, and their amusements 
tend to those of the European nations. There are now 
race-courses at Tokio and Yokohama, and the Mikado him¬ 
self attends them. The game of dakiu is the polo of 
Japan, and the Emperor is very fond of witnessing it. 
He has his nobles play before him in his palace grounds, 
and as an evidence of his fondness for horses, I am told 
that he has three hundred ponies in the Royal Mews. He 
is also fond of duck netting, and his nobles are invited to 
sporting parties of this kind in the imperial grounds. The 
wild ducks, of which there are thousands about Tokio, are 
attracted by means of a decoy in a narrow stream. The 
sportsmen hide in the bushes at the side, and a skilful 
throw of the net catches the ducks as they rise. This is 
one of the great sports of the nobles of Japan, and many 
of the wealthier gentlemen have ponds and ditches made 
especially for it. 

As to sporting, the Japanese are very fond of shooting 



Yokohama 



































































































































































































































































































































































































































































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tnaisil^rb 
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THE JAPANESE. 


293 


with bows and arrows, and the time is not long since 
when this was a necessary part of a young man’s educa¬ 
tion. Even now in certain parts of the cities you will see 
shooting galleries in which the Japanese use bows rather 
than guns, and where father and son practise together. 
I remember visiting a number of such galleries in Kioto, 
and I was surprised at the skill displayed by the marks¬ 
men. 

Hunting in Japan is good, and there is no finer fishing 
anywhere. In Nagasaki alone there are seven hundred 
different species of fish, and a classification of three hun¬ 
dred of these species has been made by a Mr. Stoddart, 
and he tells me he will give one set of the pictures repre¬ 
senting them to the National Museum at Washington. 
They are beautifully painted by Japanese artists, and 
embrace some hitherto unknown species of fish. 

The revolution which is now creeping over Japan, and 
carrying the ideas of Christian civilization among these 
Mongolians, affects the women as well as the men, and 
many of our amusements are becoming popular among 
the almond-eyed beauties of the Queen’s Court. The 
Empress herself rides her pony in a European riding 
habit, and her olive-hued sisters are not backward in fol¬ 
lowing her example. The American dances, both square 
and round, are now known at Tokio, and the pigeon-toed 
lady, who heretofore because of her Japanese costume was 
forced to walk with a waddle, now whirls in the giddy 
mazes of the waltz. 


294 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


KOREA AND ITS INHABITANTS.! 

Of all isolated nations Korea has best earned its name 
as “The Hermit Kingdom.” Within two days’ sail of 
Japan and only twenty-four hours distant from the harbor 
of Chefoo in China, almost in the track of the lines of 
steamships which trade with Tientsin, it has for centuries 
kept itself aloof from all other countries. It has shut out 
the hordes from North China and Siberia by devastating 
a strip of its territory sixty miles wide ; and though the 
land is most fertile, this portion to-day has no settlers. 
For generations there was a great wall of stakes along 
the edge of this strip, and even now the lands of Korea 
which lie nearest the coast are but little tilled in order to 
give strangers the idea that the soil is not good. 

The coasts themselves are forbidding. They rise in 
bluffs from the sea, and the west shore of the Korean 
Peninsula has so many ragged, rocky islands that the 
ruler of the kingdom has been called “the King of Ten 
Thousand Isles.” 

The navigation of the Korean waters is dangerous. If 
you will look at the map of Asia you will see that Little 
Korea juts out from the northeast edge of China. It 
hangs down in the same shape as Florida, and it contains 
as much territory as our western State of Kansas. 
Between it and China is the great Yellow Sea, the ocean 
currents of which are such that along the coast of Korea 
the tides rise from thirty to forty feet. 

The Koreans at Home. Illustrated. By Frank G. Carpenter. Cosmo¬ 
politan for February, 1889. 


KOREA AND ITS INHABITANTS. 


295 


At Chemulpo, the leading port of the country, many 
Korean junks lie half the day far inland, left by the tide 
on the mud ; and during my stay our naval vessel, the 
Essex, which was there stationed, was anchored several 
miles from the shore. This fall and rise of tides makes 
navigation to and from Korea uncertain ; and when it is 
remembered that these seventeen hundred miles of rocky 
coast line are unprovided with a system of lighthouses, 
and that at certain seasons of the year dense fogs and 
shifting channels are common, it will be seen that the 
guards of seclusion about this nation are many. 

The Koreans are a curious-looking people. They are 
brown-skinned, almond-eyed, and black haired ; the locks 
of the men are combed up in a cue, which is wound round 
and round in a knob on the crown of the head, where it 
stands out like a handle. 

Their clothes are all white, and more or less dirty. They 
consist of a pair of full pantaloons, the legs of each of 
which contain enough cotton to make a night-gown for a 
man, and which, I am told, are so long that they reach to 
the neck when stretched out. These big pantaloons are 
tied at the ankles, and they end in white stockings of 
padded cotton cloth, so thick that the feet of the men seem 
to be suffering from gout. The shoes are of straw, rudely 
woven, and somewhat like sandals. Above the pantaloons 
comes a short sack coat with large sleeves, tied with 
strings at the neck, and the whole costume is usually 
topped off with a broad-brimmed, sugar-loaf hat, three 
sizes too small, which sits on the crown of the head. 

These are the clothes of the cooly, or peasant, and this 
was the dress of the sixteen coolies who bore the sedan 
chairs of myself and wife from Chemulpo to Seoul. Ten 


296 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


cents a day is good pay for such men in the country, and 
they receive only twenty cents a day at Chemulpo. These 
coolies are remarkably strong, and they carry upon their 
back what would be a good load for a pony. I saw at the 
port men who, I was told, could carry bales of goods 
weighing five hundred pounds for two miles at a stretch ; 
and in coming to the capital my trunk full of photographic 
plates and heavy material, which weighed, all told, at 
least three hundred pounds, was carried these twenty- 
eight miles on the back of one man. The road went over 
a mountain pass. It was up hill and down. He made the 
distance in about twenty-four hours, and his charge was 
less than one dollar. 

Human muscle is the cheapest meat sold in Asiatic 
countries, and these coolies take the place of carts and 
pack horses in other lands. They do the work of our 
railroads and wagons, and we met a number of them car¬ 
rying goods to Seoul. The Koreans are physically a fine 
nation. They are tall, well formed, and the brown skin of 
these .coolies covers muscles like iron. They are intelli¬ 
gent, too, though the lower classes do not seem to have 
the phenomenal brightness of the Japanese. They have 
not the assertiveness nor business ability of the Chinese, 
but it is probable that the lack in both instances comes 
from their stagnant civilization and the oppression by 
which mind and soul are ground out of them. It is a 
nation asleep. It has good faculties, but they all lie dor¬ 
mant. What the result of the awakening will be, time 
alone will tell. 


FIRST VIEW OF THE HIMALAYAS. 


297 


FIRST VIEW OF THE HIMALAYAS.i 

It was about eight in the morning: an atmosphere of 
crystal, and not a cloud in the sky. Yet something white 
and shining glimmered through the loose foliage of some 
trees on my right hand. My heart came into my mouth 
with the sudden bound it made, when, after plunging 
through the trees like one mad, tumbling into a ditch 
on the other side and scrambling up a great pile of dirt, I 
saw the Himalayas before me ! Unobscured by a single 
cloud or a speck of vapor, there stood revealed the whole 
mountain region, from the low range of the Siwalik Hills, 
about twenty miles distant, to the loftiest pinnacles of 
eternal snow, which look down on China and Thibet. 

The highest range, though much more than a hundred 
miles distant, as the crow flies, rose as far into the sky as 
the Alps at forty miles, and with every glacier and chasm 
and spire of untrodden snow as clearly defined. Their true 
magnitude, therefore, was not fully apparent, because the 
eye refused to credit the intervening distance. But the 
exquisite loveliness of the shadows painted by the morning 
on those enormous wastes of snow, and the bold yet beau¬ 
tiful outlines of the topmost cones, soaring to a region of 
perpetual silence and death, far surpassed any distant view 
of the Alps or any other mountain chain I ever saw. 

As seen from Roorkhee, the Himalayas present the ap¬ 
pearance of three distinct ranges. The first, the Siwalik 
Hills, are not more than two thousand feet in height; the 

1 India, China, and Japan. By Bayard Taylor. G. P. Putnam and Com¬ 
pany, New York, 1855. 


298 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


second, or Sub-Himalayas, rise to eight or ten thousand, 
while the loftiest peaks of the snowy range, visible from 
this point, are twenty-five thousand feet above the sea. Far 
in the northwest was the Chore, an isolated peak, which is 
almost precisely the height of Mont Blanc, but seemed a 
very pigmy in comparison with the white cones beyond it. 

I was most struck by the exquisite beauty of form and 
coloring here displayed. The faintest pink of the sea-shell 
slept upon the steeps of snow, and their tremendous gulfs 
and chasms were filled with pale-blue shadows, so delicately 
pencilled that I can only compare them to the finest paint¬ 
ing on ivory. When I reflected that each of those gentle 
touches of blue was a tremendous gorge, “where darkness 
dwells all day ; ” that each break in the harmonious flow 
of the outline on the sky—like the break in a cadence of 
music, making it sweeter for the pause — was a frightful 
precipice, thousands of feet in depth and inaccessible to 
human foot, I was overpowered by the awful sublimity 
of the picture. But when their color grew rosy and lam¬ 
bent in the sunset, I could think of nothing but the divine 
beauty which beamed through them, and wondered whether 
they resembled the mountains which we shall see in the 
glorified landscapes of the future world. 


INDIA UNDER THE QUEEN.i 

The history of the world has among the real-estate 
records of the transfers of nations no piece of property 
like India. Its fields are the richest on , God’s green earth, 

1 India Under the Queen. By Frank G. Carpenter. Cosmopolitan 
Magazine for November, 1889. 


INDIA UNDER THE QUEEN. 


299 


and its tillable lands are numbered by hundreds of millions 
of acres. India is half the size of the whole United States. 
If it were spread out over the face of Europe, it would 
cover all of the countries, except Russia, with a land far 
richer than that which now supports the great kingdoms 
of modern times ; and if a fence were required to run 
around the whole, it would be longer than a straight line 
between London and San Francisco. 

Each side of its triangle is nearly two thousand miles 
long, and the coast indentations make the distances thou¬ 
sands of miles longer. Its grandeur of proportions is well 
exemplified in the highest mountains in the world, and val¬ 
leys in which the Alps could be dropped and not missed. 
It is an immense farm tenanted by the most economical 
and busiest people of the world, and the tenant-houses are 
as many in number as there are people in the land of its 
masters. There are on this farm (which is only half the 
size of that of our own Uncle Sam) four persons to our 
one, and one-seventh of the human race. 

It is a land of many languages and of many races; there 
are more different dialects and tongues spoken in it than 
in all Europe; and in religions it has representatives of 
nearly every creed on the face of the globe. There are 
more Mohammedans in India than in Turkey, and the 
Hindoos number nearly two hundred millions. 

It is a land of great cities, and its towns are as many as 
the people of Chicago. In passing through it I visited 
cities the names of which I had never heard, and I found 
sixty towns of over fifty thousand inhabitants. Bombay 
is as large as Philadelphia, Madras surpasses St. Louis, 
Calcutta has more people than Chicago, and the native 
city of Hyderabad exceeds Baltimore. India has thirteen 


300 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


hundred towns of from ten thousand to fifty thousand 
people, and some of the country districts are so packed 
that the average density of population is more than three 
hundred to each farm of i6o acres. The people are 
crowded more in these districts than in any other part of 
the world. With such a population it is no wonder the 
land is well tilled, and filled with such cities. India is 
governed by a viceroy, or governor-general appointed by 
the Queen, who has a council or cabinet, and who has 
agents and governors at the capitals of the various prov¬ 
inces. Only two-thirds of the country belongs entirely 
to England; the remaining third is in the hands of the 
native rajahs ; but the rajahs are under the protection of 
England, and the viceroy appoints representatives to their 
capitals, who are expected to see that they make no alli¬ 
ances with other nations, and to report if they do not 
govern their people within certain rules. 

The governor-general of India is now the Marquis of 
Lansdowne, who receives a salary just twice as large as 
that of the President of the United States, and who has in 
addition to this an allowance of sixty thousand dollars a 
year for entertaining. 

India is supposed by some to be a desert island as far as 
society is concerned. It is nothing of the kind. The 
English society of the Empire is as gay as that of Paris or 
Washington, and the governor-general holds a court like 
that of a king. He has his summer and his winter resi¬ 
dence. He lives in a grand palace in Calcutta in the win¬ 
ter, and during the time that American society is dancing 
its maddest whirl in Washington, the Anglo-Indian society 
is going through the same programme at Calcutta. There 
are hops every week, and receptions and dinners crowd 


INDIA UNDER THE QUEEN. 


301 


upon one another’s heels. I attended a fancy-dress ball 
at Calcutta at which several hundred ladies and gentlemen 
were present. Their costumes were imported from Lon¬ 
don for the occasion, and most of the ladies were resplen¬ 
dent with diamonds. 

The turnouts of Calcutta on the fashionable drive during 
the winter are gorgeous in liveries of all the colors of the 
rainbow. The viceroy and his higher officials have their 
outriders. Turbaned coachmen and footmen in many- 
colored gowns drive high-stepping steeds in gay harness. 
Equestriennes in habits made by Redfern dash, with grooms 
behind them, through the crowds, and rajahs gorgeous in 
jewels vie with the English in making Calcutta a combina¬ 
tion of civilized and barbaric splendor. The parks of this 
city are many square miles in extent, and under the rays of 
electric lamps the viceroy’s band plays to a cosmopolitan 
crowd every evening. 

In the summer the viceroy moves his court to the Hima¬ 
laya Mountains; and below the snows, surrounded by the 
beautiful Simla trees, the same dinner-giving goes on. 
There are tiger-hunts on elephants by way of variety, horse¬ 
races at regular intervals, and English employes of the 
government receive such salaries that they are able to par¬ 
ticipate in these sports and to have enough servants for 
entertaining. 

A large number of the officials are the descendants of 
the East India Company, who receive good pay while they 
are in India, and who after a fixed term of service get 
pensions amounting in many cases to as high as five 
thousand dollars a year. The commander-in-chief of the 
English army in India has a salary of nearly three thousand 
dollars a month. Many of the lieutenant-governors of the 


302 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


various provinces receive like monthly salaries, and the 
English judges are much better paid than is the judiciary 
of our country. 

The lower offices are held by natives; they make good 
clerks, and they are to be found in the post-offices, the 
telegraph-offices, and in all the government departments 
of India. The most of them have received collegiate 
educations in the government schools ; they talk and write 
English, and they are as bright young men as you will find 
in our treasury department at Washington. Small as are 
their salaries, they are greater than they could earn in any 
other work in India, and the ordinary Hindoo considers 
his fortune made when he gets into the government service. 
His relatives consider it made, too, and they swoop down 
upon him en masse. According to Hindoo custom he 
cannot cast them off, and he keeps himself poor in sup¬ 
porting them. 

The postal service of India is fully as good as that of 
the United States, and the natives use the mails more and 
more every year. The number of letters and newspapers 
carried last year was twice as great as ten years ago. 
There are now over fifty thousand miles of rail routes in 
India. A fast mail train carries letters, at the rate of forty 
miles an hour, across the country from Calcutta to Bombay, 
and the Queen so manages her Indian post-offices that 
they almost pay for themselves. 

It is the same with the use and the growth of the tele¬ 
graph. The English government owns all the lines, and it 
has covered the country with a network of wires. India has 
now over a hundred thousand miles of telegraph-wire, and 
a curious thing about the construction of the telegraph 
lines is that the posts are made of iron. One of the great 




INDIA UNDER THE QUEEN. 


303 


pests of India is the white ant, which eats anything wooden. 
A telegraph-post such as is used in the United States 
would disappear in a night, and even the ties on the rail¬ 
roads are in many cases of metal. The post extends above 
the soil about half as high as do our posts, and the wire is 
fastened to it with insulators. The telegraph-offices are 
usually at the stations, and the operators are native students 
from the government colleges, who get their appointments 
by competitive examinations. The successful applicants 
start in at one thousand dollars a year, and if good work¬ 
men they hold their appointments for life. 

It is the same with the railroads. The Queen owns 
most of the iron highways, and she is constantly build¬ 
ing more. She has trunk lines from one part of India to 
the other, and the Indian railroads are over twelve thou¬ 
sand miles in length. They are built on the English sys¬ 
tem, well ballasted, and with better stations than those of 
the United States. There is a depot building at Bombay 
which cost about one million dollars to build, and which 
will compare in beauty with any station in the world. 

There are first, second, intermediate, and third-class 
cars. The first cost three cents a mile. The fares of 
the second are about one-half those of the first; of the 
intermediate, half the cost of the second; and the third, 
half the cost of the intermediate, and less than one-half 
a cent per mile. 

But you ask, what kind of accommodations do they give 
in India for half a cent a mile ? 

Well, they are not very good. But the Hindoo working 
for a dollar a month will walk a long way rather than spend 
that dollar, and he will put up with much discomfort to save 
a small part of it. The third-class cars are box-like affairs. 


304 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


shaped much like the American street-cars, with plain board 
benches running across them. The passengers sit face to 
face on these benches, and in a crowded car each man has 
only enough room into which to squeeze himself, and he has 
to crowd his baggage under the seat or hold it on his knees. 
It is only the natives who ride third class — turbaned, black¬ 
skinned men and boys come to the trains with their bag¬ 
gage done up in dirty cotton cloths, and each carries his 
cooking utensils and not infrequently his provisions with 
him. The Hindoos travel as much as we do, and I have 
been on no train as yet that has not been full. 

The women have cars for themselves, and the poorer of 
them and those of low caste appear at the stations carry¬ 
ing their baggage on their heads. They walk attired in a 
cotton cloth or two and a score of gold, silver, or brass 
bracelets. They have rings on their fingers, on their arms, 
in their ears and noses. Their ankles are loaded v/ith 
metal, and each of their ten toes carries a silver or gold 
ring. Their faces are uncovered, their arms are bare to 
the shoulders and their legs to the knees. Still the jew¬ 
elry on each would buy an outfit of American clothing, and 
their toe-bells jingle and their bracelets clank musically as 
they move through the station. 

The women of the higher castes are supposed to be seen 
by no other men than their husbands, and their clothes are 
such that they cover their heads, and you see now and then 
an eye peeping out of the folds in the headgear. They are 
carried to the cars in chairs or palanquins which are only 
opened when they reach the doors of the women’s com¬ 
partments. 

The high-caste women of India seldom enjoy the scenery 
while travelling. The windows of their compartments are 


INDIA UNDER THE QUEEN. 


305 


often so covered with shutters that they cannot look out, 
and during a trip of hundreds of miles through some of 
the finest scenery in the world, I travelled in front of a 
woman’s compartment which was so covered with canvas 
that its inmates could have neither air nor light. The 
seclusion of the women of India is zealously guarded by 
both Hindoos and Mohammedans, and the wealthier classes 
of Indian women have the fewest pleasures. 

England’s theory of the ownership of the land in India 
is that it all belongs to her, and that the people should 
pay a rent to the English government of one-third of 
their crops. They do not give nearly so much ; but this 
is the theory, and England could demand it if she chose. 
England now gets a revenue of one hundred and nine 
million dollars a year from the land, and she pays her 
servants fifteen millions a year to collect it. 

The contrast between this immense sum and the pov¬ 
erty of the people is painful. Nine hundred and ninety- 
nine out of every thousand people in India live in huts 
of mud, and a majority of them have not what we would 
call the necessities of life. The huts are so small that the 
beds have to be put out of doors during the daytime in 
order to give room for the family. These beds are rude 
frames of wood covered with a network of rope the size 
of a clothes-line. The sleeper uses neither sheets nor 
pillows. He sleeps in the clothes which he wears during 
the day, and the beds are so short that he must double 
himself up on them. The huts are unfloored, and desti¬ 
tute of furniture. The family squat on their heels or 
sit cross-legged on benches. The kitchen utensils are a 
few pots and kettles, and the eating is done with the fin¬ 
gers. The floor is often the dining-table. 


3o6 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


The people have learned by experience just how 
much food will support life, and an Indian husband would 
go into a rage if his wife ate a bit more than this amount. 
In my travels about the world I have nowhere seen such 
living skeletons as I found in India. Throughout the 
Ganges valley, where the land is as rich as guano, and 
where Nature gives man two or three crops every year, the 
people are in a starving condition. Bengal contains thirty- 
five million people, and of all these millions there is not 
one man in a thousand who shows any signs of flesh. 
The people are nothing but bone and sinew, and this is 
the same in both women and men. 

The Queen pays more than ten million dollars a year 
out of the profits of her Indian farm for the education of 
her tenants. There are at Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta 
great universities on the model of the University of Lon¬ 
don, and the whole of India is dotted with colleges and 
schools. The universities have more than two thousand 
native students, and the professorships include law, medi¬ 
cine, engineering, and the classics. In addition to these 
there are ninety-six colleges in British India, containing 
nearly nine thousand students, and as to academies and 
public schools their name is legion. There are now 
schools for the teaching of English in every district, but 
it will yet be generations before education can be spread 
throughout the people, and only then will India be happy. 


SOME SOCIAL FEATURES OF HINDOO LIFE. 


307 


SOME SOCIAL FEATURES OF HINDOO LIFE.i 

There can be no greater tyranny than that based upon 
the distinction of caste as it exists among the people of 
India. Every man and woman among the Hindoos belongs 
to some caste — that is to say, is regarded as occupying 
a certain social and, to some extent, religious level, above 
or below his neighbors, who may be distinguished by a 
different name; and the lines that separate these classes 
are of the most rigid and inviolable character. All the 
exigencies of life — birth, marriage, death, and burial — 
must yield to the conditions imposed by this unnatural 
distinction. 

Among the Hindoos proper there are four principal 
castes, besides a great number of inferior classifications. 
The Brahman, or priestly class, is the first or highest. 
They claim to be immediate descendants of the Creator, 
and as such are of superior mould and substance. 

As far as possible the Brahman holds himself aloof from 
all other men. No matter if he be a beggar on the street, 
he is a superior being, and as such entitled to correspond¬ 
ing consideration. He will not eat with other men, nor 
accept a cup of water, even to stay a fever, from the hand 
of any one out of his caste, unless it be a servant to whom 
a special privilege is granted. He will not share his food 
with you under any circumstances, and if you even touch 
a morsel in his house or on his plate, he will throw the 
whole away. Even the shadow of a passing Christian 

1 From Japan to Granada. By James Henry Chapin. G. P. Putnam’s 
Sons, New York, 1889. 


3o8 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


imparts a taint. And if you call upon him at his home, 
be he never so polite, you are not likely to get beyond 
the doorstep or piazza. He will sit in his door and talk 
with you, or come outside to entertain you, but if you 
should enter his domicile, it would be necessary for the 
house to undergo a thorough cleansing, before it would be 
fitted for his use again. 

If a Brahman go upon the crowded streets or into the 
market, where other people brush against him as he passes, 
he must go home, bathe, and change his clothes before he 
can eat, or perform any service suited to a person of his 
rank. If a Brahman sell you a glass of lemonade, he will 
not take the glass from your hand, nor touch it again till a 
servant of a different class has cleansed it. If a Hindoo 
give a drink of water to a Mohammedan, he pours it into 
his cup through a cane spout. An alien must on no 
account touch a Hindoo’s water-pot, or if he does, he is 
likely to be called upon to pay for a new one. The old 
will probably be dashed upon the ground; at any rate, it is 
no longer fit for the owner’s use. 

The degradation of the system is apparent in the fact 
that the Brahman not only makes this vast assumption, 
but that the other castes admit his claim and consent to 
accept a lower place. 

We once engaged one of inferior caste in conversa¬ 
tion on the subject. He was an intelligent man, and 
evidently sincere in his professions. He said, by way of 
illustration, that if he were a wealthy merchant, and sitting 
at ease in a sumptuous residence, and a Brahman should 
pass that way, even though he were a beggar, it would be 
his duty to arise and invite him to come in and occupy the 
luxurious seat, while he, the proprietor, went to find some 


SOME SOCIAL FEATURES OF HINDOO LIFE. 309 

one who could offer him refreshments, without doing vio¬ 
lence to his feelings. 

Sometimes a Sudra — that is, one of the servant or labor 
caste—becomes the head man of a village in Southern India ; 
but if the council includes men of high caste, he cannot 
sit under the same roof with them. He sends up his staff, 
which is made to occupy the post of honor during the 
deliberations, while he squats on the ground outside and 
receives messages from time to time, from the assembled 
dignitaries. 

A Hindoo once expressed to us his great regret that he 
could never see America, of which he had heard so much. 
Being asked why he could not go to America as Americans 
came to India, he replied that he would become an out¬ 
cast. 

The Hindoo law —for social custom has become common 
law among these people — forbids a man to absent himself 
from his country except for a very brief period. If he 
goes abroad for any long period, he thereby forfeits his 
place as a member of his caste. His parents will not 
recognize him, his wife will discard him, and his children 
will disown him. He can no longer claim the services 
of the village barber or the priest, and will be subjected 
to various indignities. He may possibly regain his rank 
by long and severe penances and a heavy fine, but even 
then, it is uncertain whether he will be fully recog¬ 
nized by his caste. The fine in such a case is of a novel 
character, and consists of a great feast provided by the 
offender for all the members of his caste, and as these 
often number some thousands, and not a few are in a 
chronic state of hunger, the bill may reach rather an alarm¬ 
ing sum. 


310 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT, 


There are four principal castes in India : first, the Brah¬ 
man or priestly caste ; second, the Kshatriyas or warrior 
caste; third, the Vaisyas or agricultural caste, many of 
whom are also merchants and traders; and fourth, the 
Sudras or servant caste, including a large part of the 
laborers of the country. Below these are the Pariahs, who 
are considered below the definite distinction of caste. 
Workers in leather, butchers, and the like, commonly 
designated as “ cow-skinners,” are scarcely regarded as 
members of the human family. If you would heap indig¬ 
nity, contempt, scorn, and contumely all at once upon a 
man among the Hindoos, call him a cow-skinner, and the 
thing is done. The significance of the term lies in the 
fact that the cow is held a sacred animal, and should never 
be killed or suffer any harm, for man’s convenience. 

The bondage of womankind among the Hindoos almost 
passes belief. Woman is set down, to begin with, as 
the inferior of man, and of necessity subject to such condi¬ 
tion in life as he may approve and appoint. She really 
has no voice in the place assigned her or in the destiny she 
may attain. 

A woman marries the man her parents selected for her 
possibly when she was in her cradle. She may never see 
her destined husband till the day of marriage, and that is 
arranged with little reference to her wishes, being usually 
at such time as may suit his purpose and convenience. 
Once married, unless she be of the peasant class and 
destined to a life of drudgery, she must never go out in 
public except with concealed face. And if she become 
a widow, that is, if her husband die, even before she has 
left her parents’ roof, she can never marry again, and 
becomes the drudge of the household ever after. Her 


HINDOO WORSHIP. 


31 


jewels may be taken from her; she must take her place 
among the servants and expect no favor from family or 
friends. The gods have testified their displeasure by 
taking away her husband, why should she receive consider¬ 
ation at the hands of men } 

Some changes are being slowly wrought among these 
people, and with fhem some modifications of the marriage 
customs. But they generally cling to their own institutions 
with wonderful tenacity. 

HINDOO WORSHIP.i 

Allahabad is a sacred city at the junction of the Ganges 
and the Jumna. A fair and religious festival was in pro¬ 
gress, and nothing could give a better idea of fanaticism 
and enterprise combined. It is the resort of the faithful 
for religious purposes. Hundreds of pilgrims come in, 
weary and footsore; and tradesmen with their wares make 
their way from every part of India. They occupy a point 
of the wide alluvial plain, just above where the waters of 
the two streams join, and over the imaginary bed of the 
underground river, which faithful Hindoos say here unites 
with them. For some inscrutable reason, this river has 
long been hidden from mortal eyes, they say, though when 
the earth was young, the three streams flowed peacefully 
together and marked the spot as the cradle of the human 
race ; aversion possibly of the story of the Garden of Eden. 

The fair is held in December and January, and continues 
about thirty days, during which time people are going and 
coming by hundreds and thousands continually. 

1 From Japan to Granada. By James Henry Chapin. G. P. Putnam’s 
Sons, New York, 1889. 


312 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


The grounds are arranged in an orderly manner, with 
streets or passage-ways in different directions; and in 
variety of costumes, articles offered for sale, and the general 
hubbub and confusion when trade is at its height, the 
occasion recalls the summer fairs at Nijni Novgorod on 
the Volga. Although beyond the city limits the munici¬ 
pality of Allahabad controls the grounds and reaps a rich 
harvest in the way of rents. The best locations for trade 
command an enormous rental, and at the recent fair, no 
less than twenty-four hundred barbers paid a license fee of 
three or four rupees each, for the privilege of plying their 
trade on the grounds. 

A native barber in the East requires no shop, chair, or 
toilet stand. He carries his implements in his hands, and 
when he meets a customer, they squat together on the 
street, the subject facing the artist, and the face, parts of 
the head, and then the armpits come successively under 
the operation of the razor. 

All classes of the Hindoo people will be found at the 
fair. The rich and the poor meet together. Not only the 
thrifty and the strong, but the aged and infirm, and chil¬ 
dren of tender years are brought hither to bathe in the 
sacred waters, and if it happen that one die, no happier 
lot could be desired. There is no surer path to future 
bliss than from the banks of the Ganges, with a few drops 
from the sacred stream still on the brow ; and until the 
English government, for sanitary reasons, placed an inhibi¬ 
tion upon the custom, the Brahmans neither buried nor 
burned their dead, but cast the body into the Ganges, to 
sink into its turbid depths or drift away into the open 
sea. 

While the fair is made an occasion of trade and specula- 


HINDOO WORSHIP. 


313 


tion, its object is essentially religious, and of the multi¬ 
tudes that come and go, many have scarcely the means to 
keep soul and body together. They come, bringing a little 
rice, a cooking pot, and some tattered bedclothes ; sleep in 
the open air, bathe a few times, and join in the religious 
observances, and are away again. 

It is the harvest-time of the priests, whose services are 
sought as counsellors, as well as for the more formal rites 
of religion. Here and there on this occasion were sub¬ 
jects undergoing penance, presumably appointed by the 
priests. Two men hung suspended for an hour with head 
downward, and one, by the aid of friendly hands, was 
swinging from side to side like a pendulum. Another was 
suspended in uncomfortable proximity to a blazing fire, but 
all showed a determination and fortitude, that would have 
been sublime had it not been so pitiable and abject. 

One day there was a procession considered of an espe¬ 
cially sacred character. It was made up of fakirs or 
religious mendicants, almost utterly naked, chanting and 
dancing, sometimes leaping and howling like so many 
lunatics. They were preceded by a train of camels, which 
behaved themselves with demure dignity, and followed by 
a devout rabble, many of whom marked their foreheads 
with the sanctified dust over which the procession had 
passed, and some even stooped and pressed their lips into 
the footprints of the holy vagabonds in advance of them. 

A fresh impetus is given both to trade and to religious 
zeal, by the arrival of a prince who comes to bathe, espe¬ 
cially if he be of a rank that entitles him to a salute from 
the English fort, some two miles above the junction of the 
rivers. He often makes considerable purchases, besides 
leaving a goodly sum in the hands of the priests. He is 


314 the eastern continent. 

also attended by a large retinue of retainers, friends, and 
servants, who likewise improve the opportunity to bathe, 
and at least inspect the variety of goods on sale. 

The fair was favored on New Year’s day with a visit 
from His Highness the Rajah of Mysore. The garrison 
proffered the customary salute, as he passed the fort on 
his way from the railway to the river. What purchases he 
made is not definitely stated, but the newspapers reported 
next day, that his bath was understood to have cost him 
fifty thousand rupees, — nearly twenty thousand dollars. 

Only the day before there was a ceremony of a some¬ 
what different character, but equally profitable in its way. 

When for any reason, the body cannot be committed to 
the Ganges, it is the custom to cremate at home and then 
send the ashes to the river. It so happened that the Ma¬ 
harajah of Gwalior had recently died, and a deputation from 
his capital had come to Allahabad to perform that last rite. 
Some brief ceremony was observed at the water’s edge, 
during the progress of which, the British authorities tes¬ 
tified their respect by firing twenty-one guns from the 
fort, the number which the dead prince had been accus¬ 
tomed to receive as a salute while living, and the ashes 
were cast upon the water. 

The remains were attended to the spot by a white horse 
very richly caparisoned, and an elephant wearing a silver 
necklace and bearing a gift of ten thousand rupees. These 
became the property of the priests at the close of the cere¬ 
mony. The horse and elephant were bought back by the 
representatives of the deceased prince, at a fair valuation, 
the money of course going to the priests. This is no un¬ 
usual transaction, however, the priests always preferring 
money tp sprnething for which they have no special use. 


BENARES. 


315 


It is a custom among the Hindoos for a man who has 
been guilty of a grievous sin, or is simply moved by a 
devout purpose, to make a sacrifice in that way of some 
of his most cherished possessions. A prominent prince, 
not long ago, thus devoted his wife and her train of ele¬ 
phants ; ladies of rank in India having their elephants, as 
ladies in America may have their carriages. On this occa¬ 
sion, after the gift had been made over, the priests, having 
no immediate use for wife or elephants, set a price upon 
them, — two lacs of rupees, —which the prince generously 
paid, and returned home with his family, while the priests 
were the gainers by about eighty thousand dollars. In¬ 
deed it is understood in such cases that the gift is to be 
returned for a stipulated sum; but it has all the appear¬ 
ance of a genuine sacrifice. Such are some of the curious 
devices of the Hindoo religion. 


BENARES.i 

Some seventy miles from Allahabad stands a city which, 
to the devout Hindoo, is the most sacred place on earth — 
one which overtops all others, as the Himalayas overtop 
all other mountains on the globe. There are holy shrines 
in different countries, which are held sacred by the dev¬ 
otees of different religions; but there are four chief holy 
cities, — Rome, Jerusalem, Mecca, and Benares. 

As the devout Catholic makes a pilgrimage to Rome, to 
receive the blessing of the Holy Father; as the Jew trav¬ 
erses land and sea, that his feet may stand within the gates 

1 From Egypt to Japan. By Henry M. Field D.D. Charles Scribner’s 
Sons, New York, 1877. 


3i6 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


of Jerusalem, where he weeps at the place of wailing under 
the walls of the ancient temple; as the caravan of the 
Arab still crosses the desert to Mecca, — so does the devout 
Hindoo come to Benares, and count it his supreme joy if 
he can but see its domes and towers; and eternal felicity 
to die on the banks of the sacred river. 

A couple of hours brought us to the Ganges, from which 
we had a full view of the city on the other side of the river. 
If the first sight did not awaken in us the same emotions 
as in the mind of the Hindoo, the scene was picturesque 
enough to excite our admiration. The appearance of 
Benares is very striking. For two miles it presents a 
succession of palaces and temples which are built not 
only on, but almost in, the river, as Venice is built in 
the sea; the huge structures crowding each other on the 
bank, and flights of steps going down into the water, as 
if they would receive the baptism of the sacred river as it 
flowed gently by; as if the people listened fondly to its 
murmurs, and when wakened in their dreams, were soothed 
to hear its waters lapping the very stones of their palaces. 

We crossed the river on a bridge of boats, and drove 
out to the English quarter, which is two or three miles 
distant, and here rested an hour or two before we took 
a courier and plunged into the labyrinth of the city, in 
which a stranger would soon be lost, who should attempt 
to explore it without a guide. 

Benares would be well worth a visit if it were only for 
its Oriental character. It is peculiarly an Indian city, 
with every feature of Asiatic and of Indian life strongly 
marked. One thing which greatly amused us was to see 
how the people made way for us wherever we came. The 
streets are very narrow, and there is not room for a jost- 


BOMBAY. 


317 


ling crowd. But their politeness stopped at no obstacle. 
They meant to give us a free passage. They drew to one 
side, making themselves very small, and even hugging 
the wall, to get out of our way. We accepted this delicate 
attention as a mark of respect, which we thought a touch¬ 
ing proof of Oriental courtesy; and with the modesty of 
our countrymen, regarded it as an homage to our great¬ 
ness. We were a little taken aback at being informed 
that, on the contrary, it was to avoid pollution; that if 
they but touched the hem of our garments, they would 
have had to run to the Ganges to wash away the stain. 


BOMBAY.i 

Passing through the Custom House gates of Bombay, 
we were greeted not by the donkey-boys of Egypt, but 
by a crowd of barefooted and barelegged Hindoos, clad 
in snowy white, and with mountainous turbans on their 
heads, who were ambitious of the honor of driving us 
into the city. The native carriage (or gharri, as it is 
called) is not a handsome equipage. It is a mere box, 
oblong in shape, set on wheels, having latticed windows 
like a palanquin, to admit the air and shut out the sun. 

Mounting into such a “State carriage,” our solemn 
Hindoo gave rein to his steed, and we trotted off into 
Bombay. As our destination was Watson’s Hotel, in 
the English quarter at the extreme end of the city, we 
traversed almost its whole extent. The streets seemed 
endless. On and on we rode for miles, till we were able 

1 From Egypt to Japan. By Henry M. Field, D.D. Charles Scribner’s 
Sons, New York, 1877. 


3i8 the eastern continent. 

to realize that we were in the second city in the British 
Empire, — larger than any in Great Britain except London, 
— larger than Liverpool or Glasgow or Manchester or 
Birmingham. 

The streets are swarming with life, as a hive swarms 
with bees. The bazaars are like so many ant-hills, but the 
creatures that go in and out are not like any race that 
we have seen before. They are not white like Europeans, 
nor black like Africans, nor red like our American 
Indians; but are pure Asiatics, of a dark-brown color, the 
effect of which is the greater, as they are generally clad 
in the garments which Nature gives them. 

The laboring class go half naked, or more than half. It 
is only the house-servants that wear anything that can be 
called a costume. The coolies, or common laborers, have 
only a strip of cloth around their loins, which they wear 
for decency, for in this climate they scarcely need any 
garment for warmth. One thing which is never omitted is 
the turban, or in its place a thick blanket, to shield the 
head from the direct rays of the sun. But there is nothing 
to hide the swarthy breast and limbs. 

Those of a better condition, who do put on clothing, 
show the Oriental fondness for gorgeous apparel by having 
the richest silk turbans and flowing robes. The women 
find a way to show their feminine vanity, being tricked out 
in many colors, dark red, crimson, and scarlet, with yellow 
and orange and green and blue, the mingling of which 
produces a strange effect as one rides through the bazaars 
and crowded streets, which gleam with the colors of the 
rainbow. The effect of this tawdry finery is heightened 
by the gewgaws which depend from different parts of their 
persons. Earrings are not sufficiently conspicuous for a 


BOMBAY. 


319 


Hindoo damsel, who has a ring of gold and pearl hung in 
her nose, which is considered a great addition to female 
beauty. Heavy bracelets of silver also adorn her wrists 
and ankles. Almost every woman who shows herself in 
the street, though of the lowest condition, and barefooted, 
still gratifies her pride by huge silver anklets clasping her 
naked feet. 

But these Asiatic faces, strange as they are, would not 
be unattractive but for artificial disfigurements — if men 
did not chew the betel nut, which turns the lips to a bril¬ 
liant red, and did not have their foreheads striped with 
coarse pigments, which are the badges of their different 
castes. 

Imagine a whole city crowded with dark-skinned men 
and women thus dressed — or not dressed — half naked on 
one hand, or bedizened like harlequins on the other, walk¬ 
ing about, or perchance riding in little carriages drawn by 
oxen —a small breed that trot off almost as fast as the 
donkeys we had in Cairo — and one may have some idea 
of the picturesque appearance of the streets of Bombay. 








i 


* . 







AFRICA. 







THE SUEZ CANAL.i 


The water is so shallow at Suez, that for four miles one 
can wade at low tide without danger of drowning, unless 
the tide, as is said in the case of the Egyptian pursuers of 
Moses, suddenly returns, when even now you would drown 
if you could not swim. 

A mile or so out from Suez is Port Ibrahim. This place 
is the southern terminus of the celebrated Suez Canal. A 
few feet south are two lights, one red the other green. 
These upon their firm pedestals mark its entrance. No 
steamer is allowed to sail through at night without an 
electric light high on her forecastle. 

One Sunday morning, at eight o’clock, we entered here 
on our way to the Mediterranean. As we advanced, the 
water rose and fled ahead of us, while that behind rushed 
headlong after. In places, it seemed hardly possible to 
insert one’s body between the vessel and bank, but, as we 
slowly glided along, we soon came to a station where the 
canal opened to sufificient width to admit the passing of an 
opposite steamer. None but steamers are to be seen. 
Sailing vessels still round Cape Good Hope. These 
stations are but turn-outs, and of no great length. 

Ferdinand Lesseps was not the first to plan this water¬ 
way. No less a person than Napoleon Bonaparte had it 

1 Pleasant Hours in Sunny Lands. By Isaac Newton Lewis. De Wolfe, 
Fiske and Company, Boston, 1888. 


323 


324 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


surveyed years before. The Suez is more properly a water¬ 
way than a canal, as it has neither locks, reservoirs, pump¬ 
ing engines, or gates, but in its entire length of eighty- 
eight miles, its level is barely disturbed, except from the 
Bitter Lakes to Suez, where there is a slight change, from 
one to five feet, on account of the tide. 

Before its construction, the.old lakes had fallen to little 
better than valleys of salty sand, but when the Mediter¬ 
ranean was let in during the winter of 1869, Lakes Menza- 
leh, Timsah and, later in the following summer, the water 
from the Red Sea, Little and Great Bitter Lakes became 
well filled. Sweet water is conducted from the Nile along 
its entire course. 

Every five or six miles come the stations or turn-outs. 
These have a signal station, a small cottage surrounded 
often with date palm and shrubbery, all in the care of 
canal servants. The entire route is regulated by telegraph, 
from Port Said on the north to Suez on the south. 

Its original cost was $100,000,000 which, of course, must 
be short of the real sum, from the fact that at one time 
30,000 Arabs and Egyptians were forced into service by 
Mahomet Said Pasha, the Viceroy of Egypt. His suc¬ 
cessor, Ismail Pasha, refused to comply with the terms of 
his brother Mahomet. The matter was left out to arbitra¬ 
tion, by which the Viceroy was compelled to pay the Canal 
Company $15,800,000. As the canal was begun in i860, 
I think it must have been in 1863 when this trouble arose. 
It resulted in the permanent withdrawal of conscript labor, 
and occasioned the use of modern machinery, such as is 
now being used in the present widening, agreed upon in 
1866. 

Its depth is intended to be twenty-six feet, and, when 


CAIRO AND THE KHEDIVE. 


325 


fully widened, the width seventy-two feet at least. No 
rock, except a little of soft nature at Ismalia, where there 
is a slight elevation, was met with the whole distance, the 
rest being either level sand plain or lake bed. Sixty-six of 
the eighty-eight miles were excavated, fourteen miles were 
dredged out, and eight miles needed no labor. By its con¬ 
struction, the distance between India and Western Europe 
is reduced from 11,379 7 j 628 miles, and when you con¬ 

sider the great number of large vessels and the saving of 
weeks of valuable time, you begin to realize its vast impor¬ 
tance. 


CAIRO AND THE KHEDIVE.i 

Lying at the handle of the great green fan which makes 
up the vast delta of the Nile, Cairo is bordered on the 
east by the Arabian Desert; on the other three sides 
stretch fields of guano carpeted with the richest of green, 
through which the mighty Nile runs, and beyond the 
plains of which rise, like great cones of blue smoke, the 
pyramids. 

Cairo is, like Heliopolis, the city of the sun. The 
minarets of its three hundred and sixty-five mosques — 
one for every day in the year — seldom see rain-clouds, 
and the roofs of the native parts of the town are fiat 
rather than slanting or ridged. The bluest of blue sky 
always shines over it, and during the winter the winds 
which almost constantly blow over the desert are as cool 
and as invigorating as the breezes of the Atlantic. 

^ Cairo Under the Khedive. By Frank G. Carpenter. Cosmopolitan 
Magazine for October, 1889. 


326 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


Cairo lies like a jewel binding the Nile to its delta. 
From a point nearly five thousand miles above it the great 
river flows northward in its course to the sea, dropping 
the soil which makes up the Nile valley, and which for 
nine hundred miles above Cairo has built up a garden 
from four to nine miles in width, each side of which is 
bordered with desert whose only boundaries are the dry 
and thirsty horizon. 

The city of Cairo is as varied in its architecture and 
population as the scenery which surrounds it. It is a 
city of the desert and the farm, of mud huts such as you 
find in the Egyptian villages, and of palaces which might 
have been transported by an Aladdin’s lamp bodily from 
Europe. 

The Bedouins and the Turks trample upon one another’s 
heels in its bazaars, and the Jew and the Greek haggle 
over the interest which they shall charge the bare-legged 
fellah in lending him money on his land. It is a city of 
the East and the West. The pantalooned man of the 
Occident bumps against the full-trousered Turk, and the 
Egyptian in turban and gown jostles the Englishman in 
silk tile and frock coat. The plate-glass windows of the 
foreigners’ palaces now look out upon the same scenes 
as the Arabian lattices of the Mohammedan harem. 
There is a babble of Arabic, French, and German, Italian, 
and Greek, heard in every part of the city, and the cab 
and the carriage dash past the camel and donkey. 

The new Cairo is a different city from that of the guide 
books and history. It is growing in size, and it has 
changed very much since the rebellion of Arabi Pasha. 
I was in Egypt just before the late revolution, and upon 
my second visit, this year, I found that the old landmarks 


CAIRO AND THE KHEDIVE. 


327 


were missing. The new Cairo, like a clown, wears a 
parti-colored dress, one side of which is European and 
the other Oriental. The French part of the city is much 
like Paris, and in the bazaars and narrow streets of the 
Arabian quarter you imagine yourself in the most Oriental 
part of Constantinople. 

The French part grows from year to year. It has wide, 
well-paved streets lined with large houses of European 
architecture, and the Mooski, which had once a covering 
to protect its bazaars from the rays of the sun, has lost 
its Oriental charm, and is now filled with modern stores 
managed by Greek, Italian, and French merchants, who 
differ from us in costume in that they wear red fez caps, 
and black coats which are cut high at the neck. 

Cairo has become the great residence city of Egypt. 
The rich Greek merchants of Alexandria have now palaces 
in it, and the social festivities of the city form one of its 
winter features. Many Europeans and Americans are 
choosing it as a winter resort, and the climate and attrac¬ 
tions of scenery and people are much greater than those 
of South France or Naples. 

The Khedive is little more than a figurehead. He has 
his cabinet consisting of Ministers of State, of Finance, 
War, Public Works, Education, of the Interior, of Marine, 
and of Justice, and these ministers receive salaries of ten 
thousand dollars a year. The sub-ministers under them, 
however, are foreigners, and these subordinates practically 
control the country. 

The army of Egypt is as much English as Egyptian, and 
some of the former palaces of the Khedive are now the 
barracks of English soldiers. You see the red coats of the 
army of John Bull everywhere, and the military school is 


328 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


superintended by English ofidcers. The Khedive receives 
a salary of five hundred thousand dollars a year, and — 
strange for an Egyptian king — he lives within it. He is, 
I am told, doing all he can for his people, and he thinks 
that the giving up of Soudan, which he did at the dictation 
of England, was a serious mistake. 

The Esbikiyeh Garden, a beautiful park filled with all 
sorts of tropical plants and trees, with a fountain and a 
lake in its centre, has now the appearance of a pleasure 
ground of a European capital, and every night the band of 
the Khedive, dressed in European uniform, here plays the 
same tunes that are heard in the White House grounds at 
Washington when the Marine Band gives its concerts for 
the President. The streets of this part of Cairo are 
as wide and well paved as those of New York, and the 
suburbs are cut with carriage roads lined with wide-spread¬ 
ing acacia-trees whose branches intertwine so that they 
form miles of arbors. 

The Cairo of 1889 is a city of modern hotels, of electric 
bells, and French cooks. It is a town of theatres and balls 
and poker, and too many of the disciples of the Prophet 
are breaking the Koran in sipping cognac and wine. It is 
a city of newspapers and French novels, and the tele¬ 
graphic news of the day, printed in Arabic, in French, in 
Greek, and in English, for its cosmopolitan readers. The 
Egypt of to-day has more than five thousand miles of tele¬ 
graph wire, and Cairo has a telephone company, the lines 
of which connect its various houses and, running out of 
the city, cross the valley of the Nile to the base of the 
Pyramids, and almost whisper their messages in the very 
ear of the Sphinx. 

The better class of Egyptians are, in many cases, throw- 


CAIRO AND THE KHEDIVE. 


329 


ing off their picturesque costumes. The Khedive dresses 
now not unlike an American, and his only sign of Oriental¬ 
ism is in the red fez cap, imported from Italy, which sits 
on his head in place of a crown. His coat is of English 
black broadcloth. He wears a watch, and, during the sev¬ 
eral times I have seen him in Cairo, patent-leather gaiters 
have shown out under a pair of pantaloons of the latest 
Broadway cut. He gives a military salute to foreigners as 
he rides about Cairo in his barouche with his retinue of 
soldiers in front and behind him. He speaks English and 
French, and his dinners are served as are those of Paris. 
It is said that he has a PTench cook, and the menus of his 
State dinners are not different from those of the clubs of 
Washington, Philadelphia, or New York. His children 
are educated by governesses from pAirope ; and his two 
boys are now in Berlin at school. He is a prohibitionist 
as to smoking and drinking, and the Queen of Egypt is 
the only wife of this Mohammedan king. 

The Khedivieh, or the Khedive’s wife, has as many 
modern ways as her husband. She dresses like an Ameri¬ 
can lady, save that her face is covered with a thin gauze 
veil whenever she appears before the eyes of men. She 
imports her dresses from Europe, has European maids of 
honor about her, and talks French like a Parisian. She 
has her receptions every Saturday during the season. She 
has set the example of a wider social intercourse among 
the Mohammedan ladies, and I am told that there is much 
visiting among the Oriental women of Cairo. 

Abdien Palace, where the Khedive now lives in Cairo, is 
of vast extent. It faces a square of many acres, and it is 
built in the shape of a horseshoe. Its furniture is almost 
altogether European, and during an audience which I had 


330 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


with the Khedive the only sign of the Orient which met 
my eyes was the two guards with swords, who in Turkish 
costumes stood at the front door. The Khedive shook 
hands like an American and chatted with me, sitting on a 
sofa with his feet on the floor. 

Cairo, however, has still its Oriental section. The min¬ 
arets of its mosques, with their turbaned muezzins crying 
out the call to prayer, remind you that you are in the land 
of the followers of the Prophet. The dark-faced Turks 
who move through the business portion of the city on 
donkeys driven by bright-eyed, brown-faced boys in long, 
blue gowns, recall the Egypt of twenty years ago. 

If you will take a ride out into the green fields you will 
find yourself among the same people, living, dressing, and 
working in the same way as they have done since Pharaoh 
filled his brickyards with Israelites, and the women carried 
the water from the wells. On the banks of the Nile you 
see women dipping their earthen pots into the river, and 
carrying them back to their mud houses, balancing them 
so evenly on their heads that they walk and chat without 
appearing to notice their burden. You see the slave-like 
peasants farming their rich fields with wooden ploughs drawn 
by buffaloes or cows, and fat cattle dot the green plain. 

Take a walk with me through some of the narrow streets 
of Cairo. A few steps from the Mooski you forget that 
Europe exists, and you find yourself in the land of the 
Arabian Nights. There are no pavements here, and the 
streets are often so narrow that, standing in the middle, 
you can touch the walls of the houses on both sides. The 
houses are close up to the street, and you have to hug the 
wall when a donkey or camel comes striding through with 
a great load of merchandise on his back. 


CAIRO AND THE KHEDIVE. 


331 


The buildings are all of the Arabian type, with latticed 
windows, which hang out from the walls above you, and 
you may, if you look, see now and then the dark eyes of a 
harem beauty peeping through. The first stories are 
given up to bazaars; and in narrow box-like cells, open at 
the front, turbaned, dark-faced men in long gowns squat 
with their goods all around them, and on the ledge or 
divan which runs along in front of the cells other turbaned 
men sit and chaffer over prices, talk gossip, or smoke long 
pipes, and drink little cups of coffee as thick as molasses 
and fully as sweet. 

Here a lady in black gown and veil is making a purchase, 
and there a story-teller is holding forth to a group of 
bronze men and boys who open their mouths as they 
listen. Here are two boys in blue gowns and fez caps. 
They have a round wickerwork table almost as large as 
themselves before them. This is covered with cakes, 
which they are selling to an urchin of eight, who drops 
the purchase as you pass, and calls out, “ Backsheesh, 
backsheesh.” This is the Arabic word for, “A few cents, 
if you please, sir.” You respond, “Allah yatik,” or “May 
God give it to you,” and go on. 

Here is an orange-peddler who has a tray of Egyptian 
oranges on her head. She cries out a flowery sentence, 
saying that, “they are as sweet as honey, and that God 
will bless the man who buys them.” You turn to the 
right and look at a gray-bearded old Syrian who is reading 
aloud to himself. He is a Mohammedan, and his well- 
thumbed book is the Koran. We see this reading going 
on in nearly all parts of the Cairo bazaars, and at the hours 
of prayer, whatever be the business of the company, the 
followers of the Prophet bow down toward Mecca and go 
through their devotions. 


332 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


Cairo is a bigger town than Boston, and indeed, our 
Consul-General thinks it is fully the size of Chicago. Sup¬ 
pose you were shopping in one of the leading streets of 
these cities, and you should find every other merchant you 
visited reading the Bible, and at fixed hours of the day 
dropping business and engaging publicly in prayer, you 
would then have the condition that prevails in this Moham¬ 
medan city of Cairo. 

While in Cairo I visited the great Mohammedan Uni¬ 
versity there. This is the old mosque of El Azar. It is 
the largest Mohammedan university in the world, and the 
Khedive told me that it contains more than fourteen thou¬ 
sand students. Entering the vast court of the mosque, 
you find boys and men from every part of the Mohammedan 
countries, sitting with their legs crossed upon the stones, 
and moving their bodies to and fro while they study from 
books which they either hold in their hands or have resting 
on little racks in front of them. All wear turbans and 
gowns, and all study out loud. It is Babel confounded. 
You pass among them, and though your dress may be 
strange they pay no attention to you. Here a long- 
bearded, sober-faced teacher is reading or lecturing to a 
band of students who are seated in a circle around him 
taking notes. Each has a long brass inkstand and a reed 
pen, and when he has finished his notes he puts his pen 
into the handle of the inkstand holder, shuts up the box 
containing the ink, and tucks the whole into the belt of 
his gown, carrying his writing-apparatus always with him. 

This studying was all going on in the open air. . The 
court contains more than an acre. It is walled with a wide 
tier of chambers in which different classes study, and each 
of which has many bookcases black with age, and made of 


CAIRO AND THE KHEDIVE. 


333 


the lattice work which is so beautifully done by the Egyp¬ 
tians. These walls reach upward for a hundred feet, and 
the sky which roofs them is of the clearest blue. Over 
the corners of the entrance two tall minarets pierce the 
heavens, and at the opposite side is the Hall of Instruction, 
or the main room of the mosque, —a vast apartment whose 
roof is upheld by three hundred and eighty columns of 
granite and marble, all of ancient origin. The mosque 
itself is one of the oldest of the mosques of Cairo, and it 
has been a university for more than a thousand years. 

On the floor of the great hall of instruction hundreds of 
men were sitting and reading. They wore different dresses, 
and when I asked the guide who these green-turbaned 
men were, he replied that green was the color of the 
Prophet, and that these men had earned the right to wear 
it from having taken the pilgrimage to Mecca. The white- 
gowned men, he told me, were from Tunis, and he pointed 
out students from India, from Ethiopia, and from Constan¬ 
tinople. 

This university has three hundred and twenty-one sheiks 
or professors. These receive no salary either from the 
mosque or the government, and they support themselves 
by copying books and teaching in private families. The 
president of the university receives a salary of five hundred 
dollars a year, and the students pay nothing for their 
instruction. 

The first thing taught here is the Arabic grammar, for 
the teaching is done in Arabic, and the Koran is written 
in that language. The lectures are given on the Koran, 
and every student is expected to learn it by heart. I am 
told that the Khedive can recite it from one end to the 
other and he is the most devout of Mohammedans. Egyp- 


334 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


tian law is largely founded upon the Koran, and the law- 
school of this university is based upon the study of it and 
the Mohammedan traditions. 

The modern sciences are not taught, and the students 
have a contempt for what they suppose to be the ignorance 
of the Western world. They are said to be very fanatical, 
and it is considered dangerous for Christians to visit the 
university. During the hour I spent inside its walls I 
received no discourtesy from any one. I was allowed to 
go where I pleased, and I spent some time watching the 
teaching of the various classes. When I left I was given 
a page of the Koran, and one of the professors bowed me 
out with many salaams. 

This university is a type of Mohammedan education, pure 
and simple. It is, however, not a fair type of the great 
educational movements which are now going on in Egypt, 
and which are bound to create a great change in the people 
of the Nile valley. Here are a number of schools under 
the Khedive which have a good curriculum, including the 
sciences taught at the Western universities, and there are 
seminaries for women as well as men. 

In travelling over Egypt one cannot fail to be struck 
with the contrast between the soil and the people. The 
valley of the Nile is the richest of the lands which God has 
given to man. It is as green as America after a June 
rain, and its cattle have coats which glisten with fatness. 
The people only are poor. They live in mud huts, and 
their food is composed of vegetables and milk. They work 
as hard as any people on the face of the earth, and they 
are barely able to live. Still they sell to other countries 
more than sixty million dollars’ worth of products every 
year; and they are in fact to-day, as they have been in the 





The Annual Overflow of the Nile. 














































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































THE PYRAMIDS. 


335 


past, little more than slaves of the government. The 
profits all go to pay debts which were contracted without 
their consent, and for which they have received no benefit. 


THE PYRAMIDS.i 

Of course the greatest sight around Cairo is the 
Pyramids. It is an event in one’s life to see these 
grandest monuments of antiquity. The excursion is now 
very easy. They are eight miles from Cairo, and it was 
formerly a hard day’s journey to go there and back, as 
one could only ride on a donkey or a camel, and had to 
cross the river in boats ; and the country was often inun¬ 
dated, so that one had to go miles around. 

But the Khedive, who does everything here, has changed 
all that. He has built an iron bridge over the Nile, and 
a broad road, raised above the height of the annual inun¬ 
dations, so as never to be overflowed, and lined with trees, 
the rapid-growing acacia, so that one may drive through 
a shaded avenue the whole way. A shower which had 
fallen the night before we went (a very rare thing in 
Egypt at this season) had laid tho dust and cooled the air, 
so that the day was perfect, and we drove in a carriage 
in an hour and a half from our hotel to the foot of the 
Pyramids. 

The two largest of these are in sight as soon as one 
crosses the Nile, but though six miles distant they seem 
quite near. Yet at first, and even when close to them, 
they hardly impress the beholder with their real greatness. 

1 From Egypt to Japan. By Henry M. Field, D.D. Charles Scribner’s 
Sons, New York, 1877. 


33<3 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


This is owing to their pyramidal form, which, rising before 
the eye like the slope of a hill, does not strike the senses 
or the imagination as much as smaller masses which rise 
perpendicularly. One can hardly realize that the Pyramid 
of Cheops is the largest structure in the world, — the 
largest probably ever reared by human hands. But as it 
slopes to the top, it does not present its full proportions 
to the eye, nor impress one so much as some of the Greek 
temples with their perpendicular columns, or the Gothic 
churches with their lofty arches, and still loftier towers, 
soaring to heaven. 

Yet the Great Pyramid is higher than them all, higher 
even than the spire of the Cathedral at Strasburg ; while 
in the surface of ground covered, the most spacious of 
them, even St. Peter’s at Rome, seems small in com¬ 
parison. It covers eleven acres, a space nearly as large 
as the Washington Parade Ground in New York; and is 
said by Herodotus to have taken a hundred thousand men 
twenty years to build it. Pliny agrees in the length of 
time, but says the number of workmen employed was over 
three hundred thousand ! 

But mere figures do not give the best impression of the 
height; the only way to* judge of the Great Pyramid is to 
see it and to ascend it. One can go to the top by steps, 
but as these steps are blocks of stone, many of which are 
four feet high, it is not quite like walking upstairs. 

One could hardly get up at all but with the help of the 
Arabs, who swarm on the ground, and make a living by 
selling their services. Four of them set upon me, seizing 
me by the hands, and dragging me forward, and with 
pulling and pushing and “ boosting,” urged on by my own 
impatience, —for I would not let them rest for a moment, 













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THE PYRAMIDS. 


337 


— in ten minutes we were at the top, which they thought 
a great achievement, and rubbed down my legs, as a groom 
rubs down a horse after a race, and clapped me on the 
back, and shouted “All right,” — “Very good.” I felt a 
little pride in being the first of our party on the top, and 
the last to leave it. 

These Arab guides are at once very troublesome and 
very necessary. One cannot get along without them, and 
yet they are so importunate in their demands for back¬ 
sheesh, that they become a nuisance. They are nominally 
under the orders of a Sheik, who charges two English 
shillings for every traveller who is assisted to the top, but 
that does not relieve one from constant appeals going up 
and down. I found it the easiest way to get rid of them 
to give somewhat freely, and thus paid three or four times 
the prescribed charge before I got to the bottom. No 
doubt I gave far too much, for they immediately quoted 
me to the rest of the party, and held me up as a shining 
example. 

I am afraid I demoralized the whole tribe, for some 
friends who went the next day were told of an American 
who had been there the day before, who had given “ beau¬ 
tiful backsheesh.” The cunning fellows, finding I was an 
easy subject, followed me from one place to another, and 
gave me no peace even when wandering among the tombs, 
or when taking our lunch in the Temple of the Sphinx, 
but at every step clamored for more; and when I had 
given them a dozen times, an impudent rascal came up 
even to the carriage, as we were ready to drive away and 
said that two or three shillings more would “make all 
serene!” — a phrase which he had caught from some 
strolling American, and which he turns to good account, 
z 


338 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


But one would gladly give any sum to get rid of petty 
annoyances, and to be able to look around him undisturbed. 

Here we are at last on the very summit of the Great 
Pyramid, and begin to realize its immensity. Below us 
men look like mice creeping about, and the tops of trees 
in the long avenue show no larger than hot-house plants. 
The eye ranges over the valley of the Nile for many miles, 
a carpet of the richest green, amid which groups of palms 
rise like islands in a sea. To the east beyond the Nile is 
Cairo, its domes and minarets standing out against the 
background of the Mokattam Hills, while to the west 
stretches far away the Libyan desert. 


TANGIERS.i 

There are no two countries in the world more entirely 
different from each other than the two which are separated 
by the Strait of Gibraltar; and this diversity is peculiarly 
apparent to the traveller who approaches Tangiers from 
Gibraltar, where he has left the hurried, noisy, splendid 
life of a European city. At only three hours’ journey from 
thence, the very name of our continent seems unknown; 
the word “Christian” signifies enemy; our civilization is 
ignored, or feared, or derided; all things from the very 
foundations of social life to its most insignificant particulars 
are changed, and every indication of the neighborhood of 
Europe has disappeared. You are in an unknown country, 
having no bonds of interest in it, and everything to learn. 
From its shore the European coast can still be seen, but 

1 Morocco: its People and Places. By Edmondo De Amicis. G. P. 
Putnam’s Sons, New York. 


TANGIERS. 


339 


the heart feels itself at an immeasurable distance, as if 
that narrow tract of sea were an ocean, and those blue 
mountains an illusion. Within three hours a wonderful 
transformation has taken place around you. 

On entering Tangiers I was struck at once, and more 
forcibly than I can express, with the aspect of the popula¬ 
tion. They all wear a kind of long white cloak of wool or 
linen, with a large pointed hood standing upright on the 
head, so that the city has the aspect of a vast convent of 
Dominican friars. Of all this cloaked company some are 
moving slowly, gravely, and silently about, as if they 
wished to pass unobserved ; others are seated or crouched 
against the walls, in front of the shops, in corners of the 
houses, motionless and with fixed gaze, like the petrified 
populations of their legends. The walk, the attitude, the 
look, all are new and strange to me, revealing an order of sen¬ 
timent and habit quite different from our own, — another 
manner of considering time and life. These people do not 
seem to be occupied in any way, nor are they thinking of 
the place they are in, or of what is going on about them. 
All the faces wear a deep and dreamy expression, as if 
they were dominated by some fixed idea, or thinking of 
far distant times and places, or dreaming with their eyes 
open. 

As I went on, the crowd, which at a distance had 
seemed uniform, presented many varieties. There passed 
before me faces white, black,.yellow, and bronze; heads 
ornamented with long tresses of hair, and bare skulls as 
shining as metallic balls ; men as dry as mummies; horri¬ 
ble old men ; women with the face and entire person wrapped 
in formless rags; children with long braids pendant from 
the crown of the otherwise bare head ; faces of sultans. 


340 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


savages, necromancers, anchorites, bandits; people op¬ 
pressed by an immense sadness or a mortal weariness; 
none smiling, but moving one behind the other with slow 
and silent steps, like a procession of spectres in a ceme¬ 
tery. 


CHARACTER OF THE MOORS.i 

The more I study these Moors, the more I am inclined 
to believe that the judgment unanimously passed upon 
them by travellers is not far from the truth, and that they 
are a race of vipers and foxes, —false, pusillanimous, cring¬ 
ing to the powerful, insolent to the weak, gnawed by ava¬ 
rice, devoured by egotism, and burning with the basest 
passions of which the human heart is capable. How could 
they be otherwise ? The nature of the government and 
the state of society permit them no manly ambition. They 
traffic and bargain, but they have no knowledge of the 
labor that begets fatigue of body and serenity of mind ; 
they are completely ignorant of any pleasure that is de¬ 
rived from the exercise of the intelligence ; they take no 
care for the education of their sons; they have no high 
aims in life, therefore they give themselves up, with all 
their souls, and for their whole lives, to the amassing of 
money; and the time that is left to them from this pursuit 
they divide between a sleepy indolence that enervates, and 
sensual pleasures that brutalize them. 

In this life of effeminacy they naturally become vain, 
small, malignant, tattling creatures ; lacerating each other s 

' Morocco: its People and Places. By Edmondo De Amicis. G. P. 
Putnam’s Sons, New York. 


FOOTPATHS IN AFRICA. 


341 


reputation with spiteful rage; lying by habit with an in¬ 
credible impudence; affecting charitable and pious senti¬ 
ments, and sacrificing a friend for a scudo; despising 
knowledge, and accepting the most puerile superstitions; 
bathing every day, and keeping masses of filth in the 
recesses of their houses ; and adding to all this a satanic 
pride, concealed, when convenient, under a manner both 
dignified and humble, which seems the index of an honor¬ 
able mind. They deceived me in this way at first ; but 
now I am persuaded that the very least of them believes, 
in the bottom of his heart, that he is infinitely superior to 
us all. 

The nomadic Arab preserves at least the austere sim¬ 
plicity of his antique customs, and the Berber, savage as 
he is, has a war-like spirit, courage, and love of indepen¬ 
dence. Only these Moors have within them a combination 
of barbarism, depravity, and pride, and are the most pow¬ 
erful of the populations of the Empire. They possess the 
rich palaces, the great harems, beautiful women, and hid¬ 
den treasures. They are recognizable by their fat, their 
fair complexions, their cunning eyes, their big turbans, 
their majestic walk, their arrogance, and their perfumes. 


FOOTPATHS IN AFRICA.i 

Talking of native footpaths leads me to turn aside for 
a moment to explain to the uninitiated the true mode of 
African travel. In spite of all the books that have been 
lavished upon us by our great explorers, few people seem 

1 Tropical Africa. By Henry Drummond. Scribner and Welford, New 
York, 1888. 


342 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


to have any accurate understanding of this most simple 
process. Some have the impression that everything is 
done in bullock-wagons — an idea borrowed from the 
Cape, but hopelessly inapplicable to Central Africa, where 
a wheel at present would be as great a novelty as a polar 
bear. Others at the opposite extreme suppose that the 
explorer works along solely by compass, making a bee-line 
for his destination, and steering his caravan through the 
trackless wilderness like a ship at sea. 

Now it may be a surprise to the unenlightened to learn 
that probably no explorer in forcing his passage through 
Africa has ever, for more than a few days at a time, been 
off some beaten track. Probably no country in the world, 
civilized or uncivilized, is better supplied with paths than 
this unmapped continent. Every village is connected with 
some other village, every tribe with the next tribe, every 
state with its neighbor, and therefore with all the rest. 

The explorer’s business is simply to select from this net¬ 
work of tracks, keep a general direction, and hold on his 
way. Let him begin at Zanzibar, plant his foot on a native 
footpath, and set his face towards Tanganyika. In eight 
months he will be there. He has simply to persevere. 
From village to village he will be handed on, zigzagging it 
may be sometimes to avoid the impassable barriers of 
nature or the rarer perils of hostile tribes, but never tak¬ 
ing to the woods, never guided solely by the stars, never 
in fact leaving a beaten track, till hundreds and hundreds 
of miles are between him and the sea, and his interminable 
footpath ends with a canoe, on the shores of Tanganyika. 
Crossing the lake, landing near some native village, he 
picks up the thread once more. Again he plods on and 
on, now on foot, now by canoe, but always keeping his line 


MALARIAL FEVER IN AFRICA. 


343 


of villages, until one day suddenly he sniffs the sea-breeze 
again, and his faithful foot-wide guide lands him on the 
Atlantic seaboard. 

Nor is there any art in finding out these successive 
villages with their intercommunicating links. He must 
find them out. A whole army of guides, servants, carriers, 
soldiers, and camp-followers accompany him in his march, 
and this nondescript regiment must be fed. Indian corn, 
cassava, mawere, beans, and bananas,— these do not grow 
wild even in Africa. Every meal has to be bought and 
paid for in cloth and beads ; and scarcely three days can 
pass without a call having to be made at some village 
where the necessary supplies can be obtained. 

A caravan, as a rule, must live from hand to mouth, and 
its march becomes simply a regulated procession through 
a chain of markets. Not, however, that there are any real 
markets — there are neither bazaars nor stores in native 
Africa. Thousands of the villages through which the 
traveller eats his way may never have victualled a caravan 
before. But with the chiefs consent, which is usually 
easily purchased for a showy present, the villages unlock 
their larders, the women flock to the grinding-stones, and 
basketfuls of food are swiftly exchanged for unknown 
equivalents in beads and calico. 


MALARIAL FEVER IN AFRICA.i 

Malarial fever is the one sad certainty which every 
African traveller must face. For months he may escape, 
but its finger is upon him, and well for him if he has a 

1 Tropical Africa. By Henry Drummond. Scribner and Welford, New 
York, 1888. 


344 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


friend near when it finally overtakes him. It is preceded 
for weeks, or even for a month or two, by unaccountable 
irritability, depression, and weariness. On the march with 
his men he has scarcely started when he sighs for the 
noonday rest. Putting it down to mere laziness, he goads 
himself on by draughts from the water-bottle, and totters 
forward a mile or two more. Next he finds himself skulk¬ 
ing into the forest on the pretext of looking at a specimen, 
and, when his porters are out of sight, throws himself 
under a tree in utter limpness and despair. Roused by 
mere shame, he staggers along the trail, and as he nears 
the mid-day camp, puts on a spurt to conceal his defeat, 
which finishes him for the rest of the day. This is a good 
place for specimens, he tells the men — the tent may be 
pitched for the night. 

This goes on day after day till the crash comes — first 
cold and pain, then heat and pain, then every kind of 
pain, and every degree of heat, then delirium, then the 
life-and-death struggle. He rises, if he does rise, a shadow; 
and slowly accumulates strength for the next attack, which 
he knows too well will not disappoint him. No one has 
ever yet got to the bottom of African fever. Its geo¬ 
graphical distribution is still unmapped, but generally it 
prevails over the whole east and west coasts within the 
tropical limit, along all the river courses, on the shores of 
the inland lakes, and in all low-lying and marshy districts. 
The higher plateaux, presumably, are comparatively free 
from it, but in order to reach these, malarious districts of 
greater or smaller area have to be* traversed. There the 
system becomes saturated with fever, which often develops 
long after the infected region is left behind. 

The known facts with regard to African fever are these : 


THE PEOPLE OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 345 

First, it is connected in some way with the drying-up 
water and decaying vegetation, though how the germs 
develop, or what they are, is unknown. Second, natives 
suffer from fever equally with Europeans, and this more 
particularly in changing from district to district and from 
altitude to altitude. Thus, in marching over the Tangan¬ 
yika plateau, four or five of my native carriers were down 
with the fever, although their homes were only two or 
three hundred miles off, before I had even a touch of it. 
Third, quinine is the great and almost the sole remedy ; 
and fourth, no European ever escapes it. 


THE PEOPLE OF CENTRAL AFRICA.i 

Hidden away in these endless forests, like birds’-nests 
in a wood, in terror of one another, and of their common 
foe, the slaver, are small native villages ; and here in his 
virgin simplicity dwells primeval man, without clothes, 
without civilization, without learning, without religion — 
the genuine child of nature, thoughtless, careless, and 
contented. This man is apparently quite happy ; he has 
practically no wants. One stick, pointed, makes him a 
spear; two sticks rubbed together make him a fire; fifty 
sticks tied together make him a house. The bark he peels 
from them makes his clothes; the fruits which hang on 
them form his food. 

It is perfectly astonishing when one thinks of it, what 
nature can do for the animal-man, to see with what small 
capital, after all, a human being can get through the world. 

1 Tropical Africa. By Henry Drummond. Scribner and Welford, New 
York, 1888. 


346 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


I once saw an African buried. According to the custom 
of his tribe, his entire earthly possessions — and he was 
an average commoner — were buried with him. Into the 
grave, after the body, was lowered the dead man’s pipe, 
then a rough knife, then a mud bowl, and last his bow and 
arrows — the bowstring cut through the middle, a touching 
symbol that its work was done. This was all. Four items, 
as an auctioneer would say, were the whole belongings for 
half a century of this human being. No man knows what 
a man is till he has seen what a man can be without, and 
be withal a man. That is to say, no man knows how great 
man is till he has seen how small he has been once. 

The African is often blamed for being lazy, but it is a 
misuse of words. He does not need to work ; with so 
bountiful a nature around him it would be gratuitous to 
work. And his indolence, therefore, as it is called, is just 
as much a part of himself as his flat nose, and as little 
blameworthy as slowness in a tortoise. The fact is, Africa 
is the nation of the unemployed. 

This completeness, however, will be a sad drawback to 
development. Already it is found difflcult to create new 
wants; and when labor is required, and you have already 
paid your man a yard of calico and a string of beads, you 
have nothing in your possession to bribe him to another 
hand’s turn. Scarcely anything that you have would be 
the slightest use to him. 

Among the presents which I took for chiefs, I was inno¬ 
cent enough to include a watch. I might as well have 
taken a grand piano. For months I never looked at my 
own watch in that land of sunshine. Besides, the mere 
idea of time has scarcely yet penetrated the African mind, 
and forms no element whatever in his calculations. I 


THE PEOPLE OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 


347 


wanted on one occasion to catch the little steamer on the 
Shire, and pleaded this as an excuse to a rather powerful 
chief, whom it would have been dangerous to quarrel with, 
and who would not let me leave his village. The man 
merely stared. The idea of any one being in a hurry was 
not only preposterous but inconceivable, and I might as 
well have urged as my reason for wishing to go away that 
the angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. 

This difference in ideas is the real obstacle to African 
travelling, and it raises all sorts of problems in one’s mind 
as to the nature of ideas themselves. I often wished I 
could get inside an African for an afternoon, and just see 
how he looked at things ; for I am sure our worlds are as 
different as the color of our skins. 

None of my instruments, I found, at all interested these 
people — they are quite beyond them ; and I soon found 
that in my whole outfit there was not half a dozen things 
which conveyed any meaning to them whatever. They 
did not know enough even to be amazed. The greatest 
wonder of all perhaps was the burning-glass. They had 
never seen glass before, and thought it was mazi or water, 
but why the mazi did not run over when I put it in my 
pocket passed all understanding. When the light focussed 
on the dry grass and set it ablaze, their terror knew no 
bounds. 

“ He is a mighty spirit,” they cried, “and brings down 
fire from the sun ! ” 

This single remark contains the key to the whole secret 
of a white man’s influence and power over all uncivilized 
tribes. Why a white man, alone and unprotected, can 
wander among these savage people without any risk from 
murder or robbery is a mystery at home. But it is his 


348 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


moral power, his education, his civilization. To the Afri¬ 
can the white man is a superior being. His commonest 
acts are miracles; his clothes, his guns, his cooking-uten¬ 
sils are supernatural. Everywhere his word is law. He 
can prevent death and war if he but speak the word. And 
let a single European settle, with fifty square miles of 
heathen round him, and in a short time he will be their 
king, their lawgiver, and their judge. 

I asked my men one day the question point blank : 

“ Why do you not kill me and take my guns and clothes 
and beads ? ” 

“Oh,” they replied, “we would never kill a spirit.” 

Their veneration for the white man indeed is sometimes 
most affecting. When war is brewing, or pestilence, they 
kneel before him and pray to him to avert it; and so much 
do they believe in his omnipotence, that an unprincipled 
man by trading on it, by simply offering pins, or buttons, 
or tacks, or pieces of paper, or anything English, as 
charms against death, could almost drain a country of its 
ivory, — the only native wealth. 



Transporting Ivory. 










































































































































































































1 . 






AUSTRALIA. 








MELBOURNE.! 


It is but little more than half a century since an English¬ 
man named John Batman ascended the Yarra-Yarra and 
bargained with the chiefs of the native tribe located here, 
to sell “to him and his heirs forever” so many thousand 
acres of land as now embrace the area occupied by the city 
of Melbourne and its immediate environs, covering six or 
eight miles square. For this grant of land Batman paid 
the chiefs in goods, which are said to have consisted of 
one dozen cotton shirts, a dozen colored woollen blankets, 
a handful of glass-bead ornaments, twelve bags of flour, 
and two casks of pork. These were all otherwise unattain¬ 
able articles to the savages, who, however, had land enough 
and to spare. It is said that the aborigines pleaded hard 
for one or more guns to be added to the payment, but 
Batman was too wary to supply them with weapons which 
they could in an emergency turn against himself or other 
white men. 

The Englishman came and settled upon his purchase, 
built a stock-house, and proposed to surround himself with 
friends in order to form a sort of small independent state. 
But only a short period transpired before an authorized 
agent of the English government appeared upon the spot 
and declared the bargain between Batman and the savages 

1 Under the Southern Cross. By Maturin M. Ballou. Ticknor and 
Company, Boston, 1888. 


35 


352 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


to be null and void ; in justice, however, to the purchaser, 
government paid him some thousands of pounds sterling, 
and he turned over all his right and title to the authorities 
accordingly. 

Neither party could possibly have anticipated that in so 
few years this land would be valued at many millions of 
pounds sterling. Five years ago a monument was erected 
to Batman’s memory, he having died in 1839: this monu¬ 
ment stands in the old cemetery of Melbourne. To-day 
the site so cheaply purchased, with the population now 
upon it, is classed by English writers as forming, in point 
of wealth, numbers of inhabitants, and general importance, 
the tenth city in the world ! 

The first sight of Melbourne was quite a surprise to us, 
though we thought we were fairly informed about this 
capital of Victoria. No stranger could anticipate behold¬ 
ing so grand a city in this far-away south-land of the 
Pacific. Where there was only a swamp and uncleared 
woods a few years ago, there has risen a city containing 
to-day a population of fully four hundred and twenty 
thousand, embracing the immediate suburbs. 

This capital is certainly unsurpassed by any of the 
British colonies in the elegancies and luxuries of modern 
civilization, such as broad avenues, palatial dwellings, 
churches, colossal warehouses, banks, theatres, and public 
buildings and pleasure-grounds. It is pleasant to record 
that one-fifth of the revenue raised by taxation is expended 
for educational purposes. Of what other city in the New 
or Old World can this be said Universities, libraries, 
public art-galleries, and museums lack not for the liberal 
and fostering care of the government. No city except 
San P''rancisco ever attained to such size and importance 
in so short a period as has Melbourne. 


MELBOURNE. 


353 


Lake Yan-Yan supplies Melbourne with drinking-water 
by means of a water-system embracing a double set of 
pipes. This water-supply for domestic and general use is 
beyond all comparison the best we have ever chanced to 
see. The valley of the river Plenty, which is a tributary 
of the Yarra-Yarra, is dammed across at Yan-Yan, nearly 
twenty miles from the capital, by an embankment half a 
mile long, — thereby forming a lake nearly ten miles in 
circumference, with an area of over thirteen hundred 
acres, and an average depth of twenty-five feet. It holds 
sufficient water, as we were informed by an official, to fur¬ 
nish an ample supply for the use of the city during a 
period of two years, allowing fifteen gallons per head per 
day for the present population. This grand piece of engi¬ 
neering was expensive, but is fully worth all it has cost; 
namely, between six and seven million dollars. 

The river Yarra-Yarra runs through the city, and is 
navigable for large vessels to the main wharves, where it is 
crossed by a broad and substantial bridge. Both the har¬ 
bor and the river are being dredged by the most powerful 
boats designed for the purpose which we have ever seen. 
Above the bridge the river is handsomely lined with trees ; 
and here, notwithstanding a somewhat winding course, the 
great boat-races take place which form one of the most 
attractive of all the local athletic amusements, — and Mel¬ 
bourne is famous for out-door sports of every form and 
nature, but principally for boating and ball-playing. 

The streets of Melbourne present a busy aspect, and 
there is ample space afforded for all legitimate business 
and pleasure purposes, these thoroughfares being each 
one hundred feet wide,—a gauge which is maintained 
throughout the city. They are all laid out at right angles. 


354 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


with mathematical precision. This liberal allotment of 
space for public use is carried out even in the suburbs, 
calculation having been made in advance for the growth 
of the city which is sure to come. The streets are for the 
most part paved either in blocks of granite or of wood, 
being in a few instances macadamized ; but all is kept in 
admirable condition, both as to use and cleanliness. 

The stream of humanity pouring through them at all 
hours of the day is indeed vast and varied, though the 
population, while it consists of a mingling of nationalities, 
is yet distinctively English. It seemed to the writer that 
more Americans were to be found in this capital of Victo¬ 
ria than elsewhere in the colonies, quite a number being 
prominently engaged in speculative enterprises, and main¬ 
taining agencies for firms whose headquarters are in the 
United States. Several of our popular Life Insurance 
Companies are thus represented. 

It has been said that gold made Melbourne, and wool 
made Sydney, — a remark which is based on fact. The 
experiences of both these cities in the early part of their 
career were peculiar. Money easily gained is seldom wisely 
spent; sums that fall as it were into the open palm will 
burn in the unaccustomed pocket; the excited recipient 
resorts to high revels and all sorts of excesses, be he ever 
so quiet and reasonable under ordinary circumstances. 

At one time skilled labor in Melbourne commanded the 
extraordinary wages of ten dollars per day, and mechanics 
thought the millennium had come ; they had not the wit 
to see that such extremes produce in the end a sure and 
severe reaction, but experience taught them that lesson by 
and by. “The greatest flood has the soonest ebb.” The 
lavish earnings of the masses, whether at the gold-fields or 


SHEEP-RUNS IN AUSTRALIA, 


355 


at the bench, were soon engulfed in the beer-barrel and 
the wine-cask ; the bar-rooms were the only places where 
uninterrupted industry was exhibited, and where unremit¬ 
ting application to a given object was conspicuous. 

“ Our streets,” said a citizen of Melbourne to us, “ in 
the early days of the gold-rush swarmed with drunken 
revellers ; nor could we see any ready way out of the 
trouble which affected the community. Finally, however, 
the diggings ceased to yield so lavishly ; the surface ore 
was exhausted, and to get gold out of the earth a man was 
compelled to work hard for it. The great novelty also 
began to wear away, and those who were making money 
less easily, very naturally were disposed to spend it less 
foolishly.” 

The exaggerated rates of wages were consequently re¬ 
duced, inflated prices for all articles of consumption fell 
gradually to a reasonable figure, and affairs generally 
returned to their normal condition. Precisely the same 
experience was realized in the early days of the gold- 
discovery in California. 


SHEEP-RUNS IN AUSTRALIA.i 

In the broad space of country lying between the coast 
and the Alpine range, of which the Blue Mountains form 
a part, there are many sheep-runs of large proportions, 
upon which are sheep in almost fabulous numbers. The 
land here seems especially adapted in its natural condition 
to the raising and sustenance of these profitable animals, 

1 Under the Southern Cross. By M. M. Ballou. Ticknor and Company, 
JBoston, 1888. 


356 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


though it is also susceptible of a much higher degree of 
improvement and cultivation. 

Our observation was confined mainly to the country 
nearest the borders of New South Wales and Victoria. 
Here one man, a thrifty Scotchman, with whom we became 
acquainted, was the owner of over one hundred and twenty 
thousand sheep, and several other men had more than half 
that number each. Forty or fifty thousand belonging to 
one person is not considered at all remarkable in this great 
south-land of Australia. When it is remembered that each 
one of these animals must be sheared annually, the enor¬ 
mous labor involved in caring for such a stock begins to 
be realized. 

In the clipping season, bands of men sometimes number¬ 
ing forty or fifty go from one run to another to shear the 
sheep, and become very expert at the business, realizing 
a handsome sum of money at the close of each season. 
Some of these men invest their money in flocks, and thus 
gradually become possessed of runs of their own. 

Several such instances were named to us. Such a 
“neighbor” (any one within ten miles is called “a neigh¬ 
bor”) “began as a clipper two or three years ago, and now 
he owns his twenty thousand sheep.” The annual natural 
increase is fully seventy-five per cent per annum. Some 
clippers are not so careful of their means, but after the 
season is finished they hie away to Sydney, Melbourne, or 
some other populous centre, where they drink and gamble 
away their money much faster than they earned it.’ 

A smart professional shearer will clip one hundred sheep 
in a day of ten hours. The highest price paid for such 
service is five dollars a day, or rather five dollars per each 
hundred animals sheared. These men often work over 


SHEEP-RUNS IN AUSTRALIA. 


357 


hours during the season, for which they are paid at the 
same rate, and are always found in board and lodging by 
the owner of the run by whom they are employed. 

Machinery to do the clipping is being introduced, 
though not rapidly, as only a few more animals can be 
sheared per day by machinery than by hand, — a process 
similar in its operation to that of horse-clipping. The 
great advantage, however, of machinery is the perfect uni¬ 
formity of cut obtained,—a result which the most experi¬ 
enced shearer cannot insure. The operator often cuts the 
sheep more or less severely in the rapidity of the hand 
process ; but this is impossible where the machine is used, 
though it leaves the animal with a shorter fleece all over 
its body, and consequently gives a yield of three or four 
ounces more of wool from each. To feed and properly 
sustain such numbers of sheep requires ample space ; but 
there is enough of that, and to spare. 

Australia in its greatest breadth, between Shark’s Bay 
on the west and Sandy Cape on the eastern shore, meas¬ 
ures twenty-four hundred miles ; and from north to south 
— that is, from Cape York to Cape Otway—it is probably 
over seventeen hundred miles in extent. A very large 
portion of the country, especially in the interior and north¬ 
west sections, still remains unexplored. The occupied and 
improved portion^ of the country skirt the seacoast on the 
southern and eastern sides, which are covered with cities, 
towns, villages, and hamlets, where nine-tenths of the popu¬ 
lation live. 

The country occupied for sheep-runs and cattle-ranches 
is very sparsely inhabited. The reason for this is obvious, 
since the owner of a hundred thousand sheep requires 
between two and three hundred thousand acres to feed 


358 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


them properly. The relative proportion as to sheep and 
land, as given to us, is to allow two and a third acres to 
each animal. Of course there is land which would support 
the animals in proportion of say one sheep to the acre ; 
but the average is as above. 

Those who are engaged in agriculture have pushed their 
homes back inland as far as the soil and water-courses will 
avail them. The latter element must be especially 
guarded, as the country is unfortunately liable to ■ severe 
droughts. Thus district after district has been reclaimed 
from the wilderness and turned into fertile grazing lands. 
There is no bound to this gradual process of land cultiva¬ 
tion ; slow but sure, it will only cease when the western 
coast bordering on the Indian Ocean, now mostly a wilder¬ 
ness, shall be reached. 


QUEENSLAND AND THE ABORIGINES.i 

The semi-tropical climate of Queensland permits of the 
cultivation of pineapples, cotton, arrow-root, bananas, cof¬ 
fee, mangoes, and the like. The cotton is of the long and 
best staple. The planters here already compete with those 
of the West Indies in the production of the sugar-cane, 
three varieties of which are adapted to this climate; 
namely, the Burbon, the purple Java, and the yellow 
Otaheitan. It must not be forgotten that two-thirds of 
this colony is within the tropics, stretching northward until 
it is separated from the equator by eleven degrees only. 

Three tons of sugar to the acre is no uncommon yield 

1 Under the Southern Cross. By M. M. Ballou. Ticknor and Company, 
Boston, 1888, 


QUEENSLAND AND THE ABORIGINES. 359 

upon the plantations of Queensland, and this, too, where 
the machinery used in the grinding and reducing is of a 
poor character. There is one characteristic of sugar¬ 
raising here which we should not omit to mention ; namely, 
ths^ several crops can be realized from one planting. The 
first crop is called the “plant ” crop, and those that follow 
are known as ratoon crops, the latter continuing several 
years. In the West Indies and some other countries a 
first and second crop are realized from one planting ; but 
the third year requires new planting. 

This division of Australia is more than five times as 
large as the United Kingdom of Great Britain, possessing 
a world of undeveloped resources of the most promising 
character. When the great central railroad shall be built, 
— and it is believed that it will soon be under way, — an 
immense impulse will be given to Queensland. 

The sun here shines with a more tropical ardor and a 
more genial warmth than in New South Wales; the trees 
are of more varied shapes and of richer growth, — similar, 
in fact, to those of Central America. The palm takes the 
place of the eucalyptus to a certain extent, and the woods 
teem with the bunya-bunya,—a very desirable and orna¬ 
mental tree, which belongs to the pine family. Here also 
abound the tulip-tree, rosewood, sandalwood, and satin- 
wood, with other choice varieties not found farther south. 
The tulip-tree and the sour gourd recall the vegetation of 
equatorial Africa, which many of the natural products here 
very closely resemble. 

We have spoken of the bunya-bunya tree. When it is 
full grown, it towers two hundred feet in the air; but when 
young, it throws out branches all about its base close to 
the earth and to a distance of several yards. Above these. 


36 o 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


smaller branches rise in regular gradation to the top, 
forming a perfect cone of dense foliage. At maturity it 
produces annually upon its apex a large cluster of fruit, 
which is nutritious and palatable, being eagerly consumed 
by both the natives and the whites. This product is 
similar to the chestnut in taste and appearance, each tree 
producing a bushel or more at a time. The bunya-bunya 
has a sort of mysterious significance with the “ black 
fellows,” as the aborigines are called, and no one is per¬ 
mitted to cut down one of these trees. The laws of the 
colony also forbid its destruction. 

The aborigines are oftener met here than at the south, 
as they prefer to live in the more temperate climate, and 
where they can have the country more to themselves. 
They are all nomads, and probably do not number over 
twenty-five or thirty thousand, slowly but surely decreas¬ 
ing numerically before the advance of the whites. Even 
when first discovered they were but a handful of people, 
as it were, scattered over an immense continent. They 
still have no distinct notion of the building of houses in 
which to live, or at least they adopt none, though they 
have the example of the whites ever before them. As a 
rule they are hideously ugly, with flat noses, wide nostrils, 
and deep sunken eyes wide apart. 

A bark covering, much ruder than anything which would 
content an American Indian, forms their only shelter, and 
they often burrow under the lee side of an overhanging 
rock. Unlike the Maoris of New Zealand, they have no 
settled abode, and are more nomadic than the Bedouins of 
the Desert. 

The skill of this people in tracking game or human 
beings is nearly equal to that of the bloodhound. In the 


QUEENSLAND AND THE ABORIGINES. 36I 

early clays of penal servitude they were specially employed 
by the authorities for this purpose, and have been known to 
conduct a pursuit after an escaping convict for a hundred 
miles without once losing his trail, and finally leading to 
his capture. In the more modern conflicts between the 
bushrangers and the authorities they proved of great value, 
not as fighters, but as trackers. 

Missionary effort among these Australian tribes seems 
to have been pretty much abandoned. Like all savage 
races, they are full of superstitions. They pay little atten¬ 
tion to marriage obligations, but buy and sell wives accord¬ 
ing to their fancy, the women acquiescing with quiet 
indifference. We were told of one practice among them 
so ridiculous that we doubted it when first we heard of it. 
Ocular demonstrations, however, proved its reality. It 
appears that when a youth arrives at such an age that he 
aspires to be a man, so to speak, — to own property or to 
marry, — he is put through some cabalistic rites the nature 
of which they will not divulge. The initiation ceremony 
ends, however, by the aspirant having one of his front 
teeth knocked out or broken off close to the gum. This 
is accomplished by means of a sharp blow from a stone 
shaped for the purpose. 

After this deforming process is accomplished, the youth 
is pronounced to be eligible to all the rights and privileges 
of the elders of his tribe. Any of these aborigines, there¬ 
fore, whom you meet is sure to be minus a front tooth. 
By the bye, it is all important that this tooth-smashing 
business should be performed at the full of the moon, and 
it is followed by what is termed a grand “ corrobberee,” or 
feast. In old times, —not long ago, —the menu on such 
occasions was incomplete unless the principal dish con- 


362 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


sisted of human flesh ; but if this practice still prevails, as 
many believe to be the case, it is indulged in secretly. 

These savages are as fond of disfiguring themselves with 
yellow and red pigments as are Western aborigines. The 
tribes in the northwestern part of Queensland are at con¬ 
stant enmity among themselves, and being naturally fond 
of quarrelling, like our Indians, they improve every oppor¬ 
tunity to do so, frequently attacking and killing one 
another for the most trivial causes. Each tribe has its 
territory carefully marked off, and any infringement by 
another tribe is sure to end in bloodshed. 

It would seem as though everything conspired to wipe 
them off the surface of the earth. It is a remarkable fact 
that consumption causes the death of a considerable per¬ 
centage of the tribes annually. They believe its victims 
to have become bewitched, having had an evil eye cast 
upon them ; the result is that they redouble the incanta¬ 
tions which they consider to be necessary to remove all 
illness. 

The Australian blacks have a plenty of legends of the 
most barbaric character, but by no means void of poetic 
features. They entertain the idea that because the sun 
gives heat it needs fuel, and that when it descends below 
the horizon it procures a fresh supply for its fires. The 
stars are supposed to be the dwellings of departed chiefs. 
The serpent is believed to contain the spirit of a real devil. 
Any number above five these blacks express by saying, 
“ It is as the leaves,”—not to be counted. The white 
man’s locomotive is an imprisoned fire-devil, kept under 
control by water. The lightning is the angry expression 
of some outraged god. 

The most singular weapon possessed by these aborigines 


QUEENSLAND AND THE ABORIGINES. 363 

is one which originated with them, and is known as the 
boomerang,—of which every one has heard, but which per¬ 
haps few of our readers have seen. It is a weapon whose 
special peculiarities have caused it to pass into a synonym 
of anything which turns upon the person who uses it. It 
seems at first sight to be only a flat, crooked, or curved 
piece of polished wood, about twenty or twenty-four inches 
long (though these instruments vary in length) and three- 
quarters of an inch in thickness. 

There is nothing particularly striking about this weapon 
until you see a native throw one; in doing which he care¬ 
fully poises himself, makes a nice calculation as to the dis¬ 
tance from him of the object he designs to hit, raises his 
arm above his head and brings it down with a sort of 
swoop, swiftly launching the curved wood from his hand. 
At first the boomerang skims along near the ground, then 
rises four or five feet, but only to sink again, and again to 
rise. As you carefully and curiously watch its course, and 
suppose it is just about to stop its erratic career and drop 
to the ground, it suddenly ceases its forward flight and 
rapidly returns to the thrower. Sometimes in returning 
it takes a course similar to its outward gyrations; at other 
times it returns straight as an arrow, gently striking the 
thrower’s body or falling to the ground at his feet. 

It is thought that no white man can exactly learn the 
trick of throwing this strange implement, and few ever 
attempt to throw one, — or rather we should say, few 
attempt it the second time; nor can the native himself 
explain how he does what we have described. 

“Me! I throw him, just so,” —that is all the answer 
you can get from him. 

We were told that the most expert of the blacks will 


364 


THE EASTERN CONTINENT. 


not only kill a bird at a considerable distance with the 
boomerang, but that they cause the bird to be brought 
back by the weapon. This last degree of expertness we 
certainly did not witness, nor do we exactly credit it; but 
we can vouch for the first as we have described it. 


PRONOUNCING VOCABULARY 


OF 


DIFFICULT GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES. 


Key: a, e, I, o, ii, long; a, e, o, less prolonged ; a, e, i, 6, li, short; 

a, e, 1, o, u, obscure ; fiir, last, fall, tinal, care ; term ; food, foot, 

furl, 6 as in for ; ii as in fiill; ch as in chin ; g as in get; th as in 

thin ; n as in linger. 


A. 


Aconcagua 

akon-kii'gwa 

Alpine 

Til'pin 

Allahabad 

al'la-ha-bad' 

Antigua 

iin-te'ga 

Andes 

an'dez 

Antisana 

an-te-sa'iiii 

Appalachian 

ilp'pa-la'chi-an 

A Pennine 

ap'en-nm 

Argentine Ke- 

ar'jen-tln 

public 

Arequipa Puno 

ii-ra-ke'pa pdb'no 

Aragon 

ar'a-gon 

Aspinwall 

as'pin-w.al 

Azores 

a-zors' 

Pervvick 

B. 

ber'rik 

Bengal 

ben-gal' 

Benares 

ben-a'rez 

Berlin 

ber'lin 


Bothnia 

both'ni-a 

Bogota 

bo-go-ta' 

Bolivia 

bo-liv'i-a 

Bosphorus 

bos'po-rus 

Bombay 

bom-ba' 

Brauganca 

bra-giin'sa 

Brahman 

bra'man 

Buenos Ayres 

bo'nus a'riz 


C. 

Cairo 

kl'ro 

Cape St. Roque 

rok 

Carthagena 

kar'ta-je'na 

Caracas 

ka-rii'kas 

Carrara 

kar-ra'rii 

Castile 

kiis-tel' 

Caucasian 

ka-ka'shan 

Calcutta 

kal-kut'ta 

Ceylon 

se- 16 n' 

Chariton 

char'i-ton 

Chautauqua 

sha-ta'kwa 


365 





366 

PRONOUNCING 

Chihuahua 

che-wa'wii 

Cholula 

chd-ldo'la 

Chagres 

cha'gres 

Chili 

child 

Chefoo 

che-fob' 

Circassian 

ser-kash'an 

Constantinople 

kon-stan'ti-no '-pi 

Cordova 

k6r'd5-va 

Copiapo 

k5'pi-a-p6' 

Colombia 

ko-lom'be-a 

Cuiba 

koo-bii' 


D. 

Duluth 

du-lbbtld 

Dwamish 

dwam'ish 


E. 

Ecuador 

ek-wa-dor' 

Edinburgh 

ed'in-biir-ro 

El Dorado 

el'do-ra'do 

Esquimaux 

es'ki-moz 


F. 

Falkland Islands fak'land 

Fernand in a 

fer-nan-de'na 

Friesland 

frezdand 

Fuegian 

fii-e'ji-an 


G. 

Galata 

ga'la-ta 

Ganges 

gan '-jez 

Geneva 

je-ne '-va 

Genoa 

jen'q-a 

Glasgow 

glas'-go 

Greenwich 

grendj 

Guyandotte 

gl'an-dot 

Guines 

gwe'-nes 

Guatemala 

ga-te-ma'la 

Guayaquil 

gwl-ii-kel' 

Guadalquivir 

gwa-diil-ke-ver' 

Gwalior 

gwade-or 


H. 

Havre 

ha'ver 

Himalayan 

hi-mada-yan 


VOCABULARY. 

him-a'la-ya 
lion'da 
hong koiig 
wel'vii 
lil-der-a-bad' 

I. 

is-ma'le-a 
es-tak-se-hwat'l 

J. 

je-ru'sa-lem 
juni'nii 

Juan Fernandez hdo-an' fer-nan'deth 


Kioto 

K. 

ke-d'to 

Korea 

k5-re'a 

Kshatriyas 

ksha'tre-yas 

Larimer 

L. 

lard-mer 

La Plata 

la pla'ta 

Levant 

le-vtlnt ' 

Leyden 

IPden 

Libyan 

lib'e-an 

Lima 

ledna 

Luxor 

liiks'or 

Manitoba 

M. 

man-i-to-bii' 

Mara jo 

ma-ra-zh5' 

Magdalena 

mag-da-ledia 

Magdala 

mag'da-la 

Madrid 

mad-rid' 

Madras 

ma-dras' 

Mendoza 

men-do'tha 

Meuse 

muz 

Mecca 

mek'a 

Menzaleh 

men'zii'le 

Melbourne 

mePbfirn 

Minsk 

minsk 

Milan 

mil'an 

Monrovia 

m6n-r5'vi-a 


Himalaya 
Honda 
Hong Kong 
Huelva 
Hyderabad 


Ism alia 
Iztacciliuatl 


Jerusalem 

Jumna 




PRONOUNCING VOCABULARY. 


367 


Morelos 

mo-ra'lds 

Montevideo 

ni5n-ta-ve'da-o 

Moscow 

mos'ko 

Mont Blanc 

moil' blon' 

Mysore 

ml-sor' 


N. 

Nagasaki 

na-ga-sa'ki 

Naiivoo 

na-voo' 

Newfoundland 

nu 'fond-land' 

Nislinabatona 

nish'na-bat'o-na 

Nizhni Novgorod mzli ne nov'go'rod 

Nice 

lies 

Nodaway 

nod'a-wa 


0 . 

Oclilawalia 

ok'la-wa'ha 

Odessa 

6-des'sa 

Oklahoma 

6k-la-ho'ma 

Oka 

6'ka 

Orizaba 

6-re-tha'ba 

Oroya 

0-1*5'yii 


P. 

Palatka 

pa-lat'ka 

Palestine 

prd'-es-tin 

Panama 

pan-a-ma' 

Parahiba do Sul 

pii-ra-e'ba do-sool 

Paraguay 

pa-rii-gwl' 

Parana 

pa-ra-na' 

Paranahiba 

pii-ra-na-e'ba 

I*ara 

pa-ra' 

Parisian 

pa-rizh'<an 

l^alos 

pii'los 

Pariahs 

pii'ri-as 

Pecos 

pa'kos 

Pernambuco 

per-iuim-boo'ko 

Peru 

pe-rob' 

Pera 

pii'ra 

Peking 

Xie'king' 

Phoenician 

fe-nish'an 

Pichincha 

pe-chen'cha 

Pisa 

pe'zii 

Platte 

plat 


( Pottawatomie 

pot'ta-w6t'o-mi 

Popocatepetl 

po-po'kat-A-xia'tl 

Portillo 

por-tel'yo 

Poland 

po'land 

Port Said 

sa-ed' 

Port Ibrahim 

ib'ra-heem' 

Puget 

pu'jet 

Puebla 

pweb'Iii 

Puyallup 

pu-al'up 

Pyrenees 

pir'e-nez 

Quito 

Q. 

ke'to 

Quebec 

kwe-bek' 

Rio Grande 

R. 

re'6 gran'da 

Rio de Janeiro 

re'6 da zha-na'e-ro 

Riniac 

re-mak' 

Roorkee 

rbor'ke 

Salina 

s. 

sa-le'na 

San Diego 

sail de-a'go 

Saskatchewan 

sas-kach 'e-wan' 

Santarem 

san-ta-ren' 

Santiago 

siin-te-a'go 

Santa Rosa 

san'tii ro 'zii 

Savanilla 

sa-vii-nel'ya 

Scheldt 

skelt 

Seattle 

se-at'l 

Seville 

sev'il 

Semirechinsk 

sri-me-ra-chinsk' 

Semipalatinsk 

sa-nie-pa-la-tinsk' 

Shasta 

shas'ta 

Shanghai 

shang'-ha'i 

Shire 

she'ra 

Simla 

siin '-la 

Solway 

sol'wa 

Soudan 

sbb'dan' 

Stockholm 

stok'lmlni 

St. Augustine 

siint a'gus-ten' 

Strait of Magel¬ 
lan 

ma-jel'an 



368 

PRONOUNC 

Stamboul 

stam-bobP 

Suez 

sdb-ez' 

Siulra 

sdb'dra 

Sydney 

sid'ni 


T. 

Tapajos 

tii-pa'zhos 

Tabreez 

tii-brez' 

'I'angiers 

tiin-jerz' 

Tanganyika 

tan-gan-ye'ka 

Tehuantepec 

ta-wiin-tii-pek' 

I’eheran 

te-hraiP 

Thames 

teinz 

The Hague 

hag 

Thibet 

tib'et 

Tientsin 

te-en'tsen 

Tocantins 

tu-kan-tens' 

Tobolsk 

to-bolsk' 

Tokio 

to'ke-o 

Truxillo 

trob-hePyo 

Tupungato 

tub-pobn-ga'to 

' 

U. 

Uruguay 

do-rdb-gwl' 

Utrecht 

u'trekt 


V. 

Vancouver 

viin-kdo'ver 


G VOCABULARY. 


Valparaiso 

val-pii-rl'so 

Valladolid 

val-yii-do-led' 

Vaisyas 

vis'ya 

Venezuela 

ven'e-zwe 'la 

Vera Cruz 

va/ni krdos 

Venice 

ven'is 

Veragua 

va-rii'gwii 

Vienna 

vT en'a 

Volusia 

vo-lu'se-a 

Volga 

vol'ga 


W. 

Wandsbeck 

wiints'bek 

Westmoreland 

west-mor'land 

Weber ' 

web'er 

Wichita 

wich'i-ta 


Y. ■ 

Y akutsk 

ya-kcwtsk 

Yarra-Yarra 

ya'ril ya'ra 

Yeniseisk 

yen'-e-sa 'isk 

Y okohama 

yo-ko-ha'ma 


Z. 

Zanzibar 

zan 'zi-biir' 

Zurich 

tsii'rik 



LIST OF IMPORTANT WORDS 

WITH 

DEFINITIONS AND EXPLANATIONS. 


Adobe (u-do'bii). An unburnt brick dried in the sun ; also used as an 
adjective, as, an adobe mission. 

Aqua fortis (a'kwa forhis). Latin for strong water. Nitric acid. 

Asymptote (as'mi-tot). A line that approaches nearer and nearer to a 
curve, but never reaches it. 

Backsheesh (bak'shesh'). In Egypt and the Turkish Empire, a “tip.” 

Bedouins (bed'ob-enz). AVandering Arabs, who live in tents. 

Blase (bla-za'). Surfeited with pleasure. 

Boreas (bo're-as). The north wind. 

Cassava (kas'sa-vil). A shrubby plant yielding an edible starch. 

Cauliflower (ka/li-flow'er). A variety of cabbage, of which the cluster 
of young flower stalks and buds is eaten as a vegetable. 

Catalpa (ka-tal'pa). Called also Indian bean. A large tree, with spotted 
white flowers, and long cylindrical pods. 

Cacao (ka-ka'o). A small evergreen tree. From the seeds of the fruit 
of this tree, cocoa and chocolate are prepared. 

Coquina (ko-ke'na). A soft, whitish, coral-like stone, formed of broken 
shells and corals. 

Dominican (do-min'i-kan). Of or pertaining to St. Dominic. 

Don Quixote (don kc-lio'tii). The hero of a celebrated Spanish romance 
of the same name by Cervantes. Don Quixote is represented as a 
country gentleman so completely crazed by long reading the most 
famous books of chivalry that he believes them to be true, and feels 
himself called on to go forth into the world to defend the oppressed 
and avenge the injured, like the heroes of his romances. 

El Dorado (el' do-rii'do). 1. A name given by the Spaniards in the IGth 
century to an imaginary country in the interior of South America, 

369 


211 



370 


LIST OF IMPORTANT WORDS. 


represented to abound in gold and precious stones. 2. Any region 
of fabulous wealth. 

Ennui (an'nwe'). A feeling of weariness and disgust. 

Entree (an'tra'). Permission or right to enter. 

Eucalyptus (u'ka-lip'tus). A tree found principally in Australia. It has 
rigid, entire leaves, with one edge turned toward the zenith. Its 
timber is of great value. 

Gendarme (zhan'darm'). An armed policeman in France. 

Guanaco (gwa-nii'ko). A South American mammal allied to the llama, 
but of larger size and more graceful form. 

Guava (gwii'va). A tropical tree, or its fruit. Delicious jelly is made 
from the fruit. 

Jaguar (ja-gwar'). A large and powerful cat-like animal. Called also 
the American tiger. 

Jute (jut). A plant the fibre of which is much used in making mats, 
cordage, paper, etc. 

Khedive (ka dev'). A governor or viceroy. 

Kiosk (ke-osk'). A Turkish open summer-house or pavilion, supported 
by pillars. 

Koran (ko'ran). The Scriptures of the Mohammedans. 

Lettuce (let'tis). A plant, the leaves of which are used as salad. 

Lignum vitae (lig'num vl'te). A very hard and valuable wood. 

Liana (ll-a'na). A woody plant, climbing high trees and having rope¬ 
like stems. 

Lime-tree (lim). The tree that bears the lime, — a fruit allied to the 
lemon, but much smaller. 

Mango (man'go). A large tree that produces the mango of commerce. 
The fruit of the mango is rather larger than an apple, and of an 
ovoid shape. The green fruit is pickled for market. 

Mameluca (mam'e-lu'ka). One in whose veins are white and Indian 
blood. 

Mandioca-meal (man'-de-o'ka). A kind of meal from which tapioca is 
prepared. 

Maoris (nui'o-rez). The aboriginal inhabitants of New Zealand. 

Maharajah (ma-ha-ra'jii). A sovereign prince in India:—a-title given 
also to other persons of high rank. 

Mikado (mi-ka'do). The hereditary sovereign of Japan. 

Mujik (moo'zhik). A Russian peasant. 

Penates (pe-na'tez). The household gods of the ancient Romans. They 
presided over the home and the family hearth. 

Phoebus (fe'bus). The sun. 

Plantain (plan'tan). A tree-like herb, bearing immense leaves and large 
clusters of the fruits called plantains. 


LIST OF IMPORTANT WORDS. 3^1 

Pronunciamento (pr6-nun'si-a-iiien't6). A proclamation; a formal an¬ 
nouncement. 

Ramie (ram'e). The grass-cloth plant; also its fibre, which is very fine 
and exceedingly strong. 

Savant (sa-van'). A man of learning. 

Savoir-faire. Ability ; contrivance or skill. 

Senoritas (sa'ny6-re'taz). Young ladies. 

Spinach (spin'aj). A common pot-herb. 

Sphinx (sfinks). In Egyptian art, an image of granite or porphyry, 
having a human head, or the head of a ram or of a hawk, upon the 
wingless body of a lion. 

Vised (ve-zad'). Examined and endorsed, as a passport. 

Viceroy (vis'roi). The governor of a country or province who rules in 
the name of the sovereign with regal authority as the king’s substi¬ 
tute ; as, the viceroy of India. 

Zulus (zdb'looz). A most important tribe living on the southeast coast 
of Africa. They are noted for their warlike disposition, courage, 
and military skill. 


FAMOUS MEN NAMED IN THE 


Barrios (biir're-os), Justo Eufino. Central American 

statesman. 

Bolivar (bol'i-var), Simon. Liberator of Bolivia . 

Burns (burnz), llobert. Scottish poet .... 
Chambers (cham'berz), Kobert. Scottish writer and 

publisher. 

Charles V. Emperor of Germany, and King of Spain 

as Charles I. 

Cortes (kor'tez), Hernando. Spanish conqueror of Mexico 
Darwin (diir'wiii), Charles Robert. English naturalist . 
Descartes (da'kart'), Rene. French philosopher . 
Gibbon (pb'on), Edward. English historian . 

Herodotus (he-rod'o-tus). Father of History. Greek 

historian . ..n.c. 

Humboldt, von (von hum'bblt), Friedrich Heinrich Alex¬ 
ander, Baron. German naturalist .... 
Jeffrey, (jef'ri), Francis. Scottish lawyer, critic, and es¬ 
sayist. Editor of the Edinhtiryh lievieio . 

Lesseps, de (deh la'sep' ; English, les'eps), Ferdinand, 
Viscount. French diplomatist, and engineer of the 

Suez canal. 

Maximilian, Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph. Archduke of 
Austria, and emperor of Mexico. Executed in Mexico 

Nunez (noo'nes), Rafael. 

Offenbach (of'en-bilk), Jacques. French composer of 
comic operas . . . . . . . . 

Philip II. King of Spain . 

Pizarro (pe-zar'ro). Francisco. Conqueror of Feru 
Pliny (plin'i). Roman naturalist and author . 

Ponce de Leon (poidthii da la-on'; Anglicized ponss de 
lee'qn), Juan. Spanish discoverer of Florida . 

Poe (pd), Edgar Allan. American poet . 

Scott, Walter, Sir. Scottish novelist and poet 

Smith, Alexander. Scottish poet. 

Voltaire, de (deh vol-ter'), Francois JMarie Aronct. 
French author . . . 


TEXT. 


r.ORN. DIKl). 

1835 1885 

1783 1830 

1759 1790 

1802 1871 

1500 1558 

1485 1547? 

1809 1882 

1596 1050 

1737 1794 

484? 420? 

1769 1859 

1773 1850 


1805 

1832 1807 

1825 

1819 1880 

1527 1598 

1496 1541 

23 79 

1400 1521 

1809 1849 

1771 1832 

1830 1807 

1094 1778 



372 





















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